Happy Telepathic Kids: The Magic Meadow

I seem to have misplaced my bag of books, which is a shame because it not only holds the book I was supposed to finish today, but also the almost-due library book and my NOOK. I'm hoping I left it somewhere obvious like my couch and it just temporarily turned invisible, and that I didn't leave it anywhere annoying like at the IHOP where I fed the kids. Anyway, at 10:00 PM I grabbed the next book on my shelf and spent an pleasant hour reading through Alexander Key's The Magic Meadow.

Like most of Key's works, this involves kindly paranormal kids at the intersection of our grungy, greedy, grasping world and a more highly evolved culture that involves loving nature and abstaining from money. Oh, and singing to the dawn in antigravity boats. These kids are trapped in the "orphaned cripples" ward of a condemned hospital, and they have only each other and the kindly night nurse. To amuse themselves, they imagine better places to be, and in the first pages main character Brick discovers the ability to will himself to one of those places, and the kids frantically race to get there before disaster strikes back at their lonely ward.

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I liked how no one worried about how the kids get their powers; they just practice until they can do things, and they have plenty of time since all they do is languish in the ward. They can all listen in to the thoughts around them in the hospital, although it's usually too depression to bear. And getting to the magic place they visualized is all they really need to get better -- immediately their toes start wiggling and they all begin walking. I never really worried that things wouldn't work out, so I liked the escalating tensions, both the immediate problem of escaping the hospital and then the slower issue of eating once they get to the Better Place.