One day, a mysterious stranger arrives at a boardinghouse of the widow Gateau- a sad-faced stranger, who keeps to himself. When the widow's daughter, Mirette, discovers him crossing the courtyard on air, she begs him to teach her how he does it. But Mirette doesn't know that the stranger was once the Great Bellini- master wire-walker. Or that Bellini has been stopped by a terrible fear. And it is she who must teach him courage once again. Emily Arnold McCully's sweeping watercolor paintings carry the reader over the rooftops of nineteenth-century Paris and into an elegant, beautiful world of acrobats, jugglers, mimes, actors, and one gallant, resourceful little girl.

Mirette and the Great Bellini sweep all of Europe with their act on the high wire, but when Bellini is arrested after a performance in St. Petersburg, Mirette is challenged to master the Death Walk to save him from prison, in the sequel to the Caldecott Medalwinning Mirette on the High Wire. Reprint.

In this book, Mirette and Bellini have been invited to walk across a wire over Niagara Falls. But when they arrive in New York, it seems they have been challenged by an imposter! Luckily, their new friend, young Jakob from Poland, discovers the imposter's special trick, and Mirette and Bellini succeed once more in high style, stunning the onlookers and giving us another thrilling high-wire story.