The only good thing about going to...

The only good thing about going to England is that Princess Diana lives there. At least, this is what 12-year-old Diana Baldwin of Minnesota thinks as she begrudgingly enters customs in London.

In A Dream of Queens and Castles by Marion Dane Bauer (Clarion Books: $13.95; 118 pp.), Diana is with her mother, a single parent and professor who is on an exchange program with Bishop Grossteste College in Lincoln. Typical of most adolescents, Diana perceives that the world revolves around her and that nobody else has feelings such as hers. She’s worried that her friends back home will forget her, and she’s mad that she’ll have to go to the trouble of making friends in England when, after all, they’re leaving in a year.

Diana already feels uprooted from the previous moves she and her mother have made: from Ft. Worth to Denver to Minneapolis and now to England. Above all, she feels her mom doesn’t spend enough time with her. Diana therefore decides to pursue one goal and one goal only: to curtsy before the Princess of Wales, who surely will be thrilled to meet a namesake from America.

With this dream in mind, Diana explores her new home, the village of Coleby. As she wanders across a pasture, she sees a white-haired gent coming her way. Group Captain Somers introduces himself, and when he learns that Diana wants to visit Buckingham Palace, he is delighted. What a coincidence he tells her, for he needs to meet with the Royal Family himself. He is a veteran of two world wars and is due to be given a Victorian Cross for bravery. He purchases them each a ticket for the train to London and off they go.

Diana’s adventure with her elderly companion is entertaining. When she happens upon a garden party attended by the princess, Diana Baldwin is given a dose of reality that might surprise young readers. The scene where Group Captain Somers encounters a plainclothesman and several bobbies is extremely touching, as is Diana’s gradual discovery that things aren’t always what they seem. She learns, too, that relationships with mothers are worth nurturing.

“A Dream of Queens” offers a quality story for 9-to-12-year-olds who will appreciate a broader and almost tender view of the world.

It’s interesting to note that author Robin Moore’s family has lived in the Pennsylvania mountains for the last two centuries. This ancestral land is the setting for his smoothly written The Bread Sister of Sinking Creek (Lippincott: $12.95; 154 pp.)

During the summer of 1776, 14-year-old Maggie Callahan journeys into Penn’s Valley, a rugged settlement 200 miles beyond the civilized streets of Philadelphia from which she has fled. An orphan with only a future of servitude to look forward to, Maggie heads for the homestead of her beloved Aunt Frannie and Uncle Thomas, only to discover that they have picked up stakes for Ohio. Maggie stays in their abandoned cabin but soon is taken in by the gloomy McGrew family, who apparently suffer from a mysterious sorrow.

Among Maggie’s meager possessions is a small leather pouch that holds the starter yeast for sourdough bread, given to her by Aunt Frannie when the two last met. Bread-baking is the Callahan legacy, Aunt Frannie had told her, and now Maggie realizes this legacy is the only thing that will insure her survival on the frontier. The homesteaders soon learn that Maggie has a special talent for baking and thus call her the Bread Sister, an honored role, and one previously filled by Frannie.

A hint of romance generates a surprise ending, but one fitting with Maggie’s character. The story is touching, at times funny, and it vividly portrays the danger and the excitement of early America. In an afterword, Moore explains the mouth-watering history of sourdough and includes two recipes that seem simple enough if one has a knack in the kitchen.

Gregory’s “Jenny of the Tetons” (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) received the Society of Children’s Book Writers 1989 Golden Kite Award for Fiction. Her second book for young readers, “The Legend of Jimmy Spoon” (HBJ), is due in May.