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    Amanda in Spain: The Girl in the Painting
    Amanda in Spain: The Girl in the Painting
    Amanda in Spain: The Girl in the Painting
    Ebook74 pages55 minutes

    Amanda in Spain: The Girl in the Painting

    By Darlene Foster

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    About this ebook

    Amanda Jane Ross is certainly becoming a world traveller; she's now in sunny Spain on vacation with her friend Leah. While there, she encounters a mysterious young girl who looks eerily like the girl in a famous painting she saw in a Madrid museum. Even weirder, the girl keeps showing up wherever Amanda finds herself - Madrid, the remote mountains of rural Spain, the beaches on the Mediterranean Sea, a lively fiesta and the busy streets of Barcelona. Amanda wants to help this sweet, young girl and her beloved pony escape the clutches of a mean horse-dealer.

    Come with Amanda on her next adventure as she attempts to unravel the mystery behind the Girl in the Painting while she treks across Spain - always one step ahead of danger!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCentral Avenue Publishing
    Release dateMay 4, 2010
    ISBN9781926760506
    Amanda in Spain: The Girl in the Painting

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    • 5/5
      Twelve-year old Amanda Ross from Canada sets off on a wonderful adventure in Spain with her friend Leah. It all begins when Amanda sees a girl in a painting, one of the figures in Velasquez's masterpiece, Las Meninas, at the Prado. She is mesmerized. As she travels, the girl in the painting seems to reappear wherever she is - is it a ghost or a real person? The mystery unfolds as Amanda and Leah discover Spain. This was a wonderful story. Ms. Foster's imagery brought Spain to life. You could feel the heat, see the sun glinting off the buildings and the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean. I thought of Amanda as a modern Anne of Green Gables - with a life a bit more exciting than Anne Shirley's! Amanda is a precocious girl with sass and smarts. Leah is the BFF who is cool and sophisticated - the girl at school everyone wanted to be friends with, but a girl who gets hooked in the mystery and adventure and stays by her friend's side. The story moves at a quick pace and keeps your attention. Ms. Foster knows her audience and doesn't 'talk-down' to her young readers. The dialogue is realistic as are the characters. If you're looking for a good summer read for your 'tween,' this is it. A seriously fun read and highly recommended.

    Book preview

    Amanda in Spain - Darlene Foster

    Amanda

    in

    SPAIN

    The GIRL IN THE PAINTING

    darlene foster

    2011

    Central Avenue Publishing

    Copyright © 2011

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

    This Central Avenue Publishing edition is published by

    arrangement with Darlene Foster.

    Central Avenue Publishing – centralavenuepublishing.com

    Second print edition

    Amanda in Spain: The Girl in the Painting

    ISBN 978–1–926760–55-1 pbk

    Published in Canada.

    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

    Cover design: Michelle Halket Cover Images: iStock / milena28121981 Vecteezy / daggerconnect

    To
    Linda
    who believed in dreams

    Chapter 1

    Amanda smiled at the young girl across the room. She looked back at Amanda with unblinking, round eyes from a pale face framed with chestnut ringlets tumbling past her shoulders. Her elaborate red and silver dress was much too big and too grown up for someone her age.

    Amanda, hurry up. Mom and Dad are going into the next room, shouted Leah.

    I’m coming, answered Amanda. She gave the mysterious girl one last glance. She was about nine or ten; younger than Amanda, and looked friendly. Amanda had an urge to wave good-bye, but that would look just plain silly. The person smiling at her was part of a painting in the middle of Madrid’s Prado Museum.

    When the email arrived from Leah in England inviting her to spend a holiday in Spain with her and her parents, Amanda Jane Ross jumped at the chance to visit another country. She looked up all kinds of information about Spain on the internet. Now that she was actually there, the massive buildings and the gigantic, marble sculptures in the middle of the streets seemed much older and larger than she imagined. She felt like she had gone back to the time of the Crusades and expected, at any minute, a knight to come charging around a corner on his white stallion.

    The melodious sound of Spanish spoken by the friendly citizens made her feel welcome. They shouted, ¡Hola! which Amanda knew meant, ‘Hello’.

    Leah and Amanda walked through the marble hallways and galleries of the museum, viewing the paintings and sculptures. Happy to be together again, they had so much to talk about. Like what they had been doing since they last saw each other, how they first met in the United Arab Emirates and their adventures in the desert.

    This will be a quieter holiday, reported Amanda.

    Leah laughed, Yes, I remember how you got us both into trouble last time, my crazy Canadian friend.

    That night when Amanda went to bed in the hotel room, her head full of the many wonderful things she had seen and done that day, her mind kept going back to the girl in the painting. Amanda had a keen desire to get to know her, but since she had been painted over three hundred years ago, that was quite impossible. Just as she was about to fall asleep, she remembered the sign underneath the painting read Doña Margarite. She decided to look up some information about her on the internet when she had a chance.

    The next morning after breakfast, Amanda, Leah and her parents went shopping. The warm smell of coffee greeted Amanda as they walked down a street lined with outdoor tables and chairs, occupied by people sipping coffee and reading newspapers.

    Amanda looked up. Above the shops, people stood on balconies looking down at them. They looked real, except they were dressed in old-fashioned clothes with hair piled up high on top of their heads. Similar to the paintings she saw the day before. They also didn’t move. One of the figures smiled at Amanda, turned around, and went inside. Definitely not a statue – but a real girl wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. The strange thing was, her face, and her smile, looked exactly like the girl in the painting.

    Come along, Amanda. Why are you so interested in all these old buildings and things? Wait until you see the lovely shop over here. You will just go mad over the fashions. Leah grabbed her arm and pulled her along.

    Amanda wasn’t sure she actually saw what she thought she saw – a modern

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