In Seven Spells to Sunday we have another of Andre Norton’s collaborative novels for children, from the same publisher and the same era (mid to late Seventies) as the Star Ka’at series. According to the author bios, her collaborator, Phyllis Miller, had the idea, “inspired by a young reader who asked for a book about ‘real magic.’” But the book reads as pretty much straight Norton.

There are two protagonists, both misfits, both in foster care. Monnie is a tough, streetwise, not very nice almost-ten-year-old. Bim is about the same age, much more timid, and much beset with bullies at school and on the street. They live with a nice couple who have a daughter in her late teens, but they’ve both been bumped around the system and they both expect to be moved on sooner or later. There’s no talk of their being adopted. They clearly expect to keep living in other people’s houses until they finally age out of the system.

Then one day, in a vacant lot near the apartment, Monnie finds an old purple mailbox. Moved by an impulse she can’t explain, she salvages it and sets it up. She writes her name on it and, again for no explainable reason, makes up a letter to put in it, asking for mail in return.

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