If you opened a book and the characters sprang to life, what would you do? Run away? Pretend you're not quaking in your shoes? Or accept it with equal measures of awe and respect because, hey, where else could you meet Mary Poppins, Albert Einstein, or Tarzanin the flesh. This is the dilemma 17-year-old Johanna Charette and 16-year-old Jackson Roth face when they first arrive at the Library of Illumination. They find opening books in an enchanted library fun ... adventurous ... and sometimes dangerous. But any problems cause by living literature pale against what's waiting for them on the other side of a disguised portaland make no mistakeit will soon have them thinking, "there's no place like home."