This book and it's whole series is one of my new found favorites. This book was a very entertaining story that has real historical facts tied into it. The main characters Ruthie and Jack go to an art institute and find a key in the back room that allows them to shrink and go into miniature rooms. They find out that those miniature rooms are gateways to the past and they meet and help people from different time periods, like a girl from the french revolution; with their problems. This book was very fun to read. I really enjoyed the book, even though it lacked action unlike most of my other favorite series'.

The book is very great and explain lot of detail of the story.

This book has a great concept and likeable characters, but it was so slow moving I finally had to give up reading to get to the adventure part of the story. Kids like things to happen pretty quickly in books. In this book the beginning chapters are taken up with background information, a field trip and finding a key. Then when the main character finds out the key will shrink only her for some mysterious reason, all she does is look through room after room in the dollhouse.
I love the idea of art in literature, but to keep readers' attention, I feel there needs to be more up front action. This is the first book in a series. I have not read the others so I do not know if the adventure gets better in the books that follow.

SUCh a great idea. Intreging but good. A quick read for older readers

If you are a girl, chances are that you once played with a dollhouse. And if you did, chances are you sometimes imagined what it would be like to live inside that dollhouse. For sixth grader Ruthie Stewart the dollhouse of her imagination isn’t just a toy she used to play with. Instead, Ruthie becomes fascinated with the elaborate Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago. This real exhibit at the museum consists of sixty-eight meticulously decorated miniature rooms representing different styles and cultures throughout history. Ruthie sees them for the first time when her class goes to the Art Institute for a field trip. Instantly transfixed by the rooms, she wonders when she’ll get to come back to the museum to see them again. She doesn’t have to wonder long. Jack, Ruthie’s best friend, stumbles across a mysterious key on the museum floor and soon the two are hatching a plan to return the next day and find out what it opens. What neither friend plans for, though, is the key’s magic ability to shrink Ruthie to the exact size necessary for her to wander through the miniature rooms. Deciding that the best way to fully explore the rooms is after the museum closes, they decide to sneak in and spend the night. This is just the beginning of their adventure as they attempt to figure out how the key works and who else has explored the rooms before them. Part mystery, part adventure, and part magic this book is for anyone who has ever seen the Thorne Rooms or who always just wanted to know what it would be like to “disappear” to another time and place.

Sixty-eight rooms was a very interesting and cool book!!

I had never heard of the thorne rooms before (the main setting of the book) and got veey interested in them.
I looked them up on google images and was amazed at their beauty and the sense of....magic i felt when looking at them and reading about them.

It was overall a great book that i recommend!!!