he Challengers is one of Grace’s intriguing books about children left to fend for themselves.

From the J.B. Lippincott Co. jacket flap:

Phyllis held the candle high above her head. The cellar lay below her in an inky pool of shadow. Ouside a cold rain swept down in torrents. Her sister, pretty Melissa, was out in it looking for work. Her mother, too, was away visiting her sick husband at the hospital. Soon Bob and Rosalie would be back from school. There was no food and their landlady had callously left them without heat. So Phyllis built a fire herself and almost lost the cuckoo clock with its precious secret to the wrathful Mrs. Barkus.

Mrs. Hill has written a splendid new story of the five Challenger children who met their plight with fine courage, which carried them through Steve’s accident and Melissa’s harrowing adventures, until that day when a lawyer knocked at the door and delivered a strange message.