![]() The time is 1967, and the teacher is Miss Renshaw, a springy-haired freethinker who begins taking her uniformed charges out of school and into Sydney's botanical gardens to release their inner spirits. Its effect, especially the "thin, strong bond of shame" it creates, will last through the girls' childhoods and change the contours of their lives. In Ursula Dubosarsky's chilling, elegant, atmospheric novel "The Golden Day" (Candlewick, 149 pages, $15.99), it is what a fourth-grade teacher in an Australian girls' school says to her class of obedient pupils. ![]() ![]() Few sentences, when spoken by an adult to a child, possess the sinister ambiguity of: "It will be our little secret." It is the language of the liar, the creep and the pedophile-a confiding technique that exploits a child's loyalty to keep quiet something that should probably be spoken aloud. ![]()
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