When twelve-year-old orphan Maggie Campbell plays one prank too many, she finds herself in a world even she couldn’t have imagined: a world of dragons and elves, werewolves and witches. Luckily her captors decide not to kill her – at least for the present – and Maggie does her best to settle in with the Moon family. She soon discovers, however, it’s hard to relax when the father is a crazy inventor and the children are, quite literally, animals. Still, she is thankful they live in a real house and not nearby Mount Saladima, the volcano that’s home to Rosie, another new friend.

But even with new friends and plenty of adventure, Maggie can’t help being homesick for Tuckerton’s Orphanage for Girls. She sets about investigating the Dusky Woods and The Shadow, the evil queen who raises Wobble Bells to help her kidnap children. Maggie figures if she can learn enough about the queen and the woods, she just might avoid becoming The Shadow’s next victim and find her way home. But to do it she’ll need her friend’s special powers and a few powers of her own, including a new prank or two.