Pre-teen English girl Elizabeth (no nicknames please) is on vacation with her grandparents and their annoying and overly spoiled lapdog for the summer. It has been raining nearly non-stop, and so Elizabeth takes refuge in the storeroom of a neighbor's junk shop.
There in the back, she finds a tri-fold mirror, and when she looks in, the reflections in the side panels aren't quite her. When one winks at her, she begins an adventure with her two shadow-people, Liza and Liz. One is proper and dutiful (and a little snobby and stuck-up) and the other is a little hellion, demanding and childish, but also playful and fun.
Elizabeth isn't the only one who knows about the mirror's shadow people, and she soon meets and befriends a few neighbor children.
When everything goes horribly wrong (as it usually does in these sorts of tales) her new friends are there for her, and Elizabeth learns that the shadowy parts of our selves, the ones we keep hidden away, usually aren't the nice parts.
This may be a book that you remember from your childhood. Some scenes which stuck out to me when re-reading:
Elizabeth, Liza, and Liz dancing in the storeroom.
The playacting with Robin and Elizabeth, and all their shadows.
The "grotto" in the cellar.
Petsy, the spoiled and grumpy lapdog.
Elizabeth dancing in the Shakespeare play, with Robin playing the fool as Puck.
Ups and Downs:
Ups:
Quick pacing, clear narration (not always easy with two sets of three incarnations of narrators), interesting and individual characters, really nifty storyline idea.
Downs:
A little too hazy for my tastes on the specifics of the shadow-people as well as a bit sloppy in following the established "rules" for their interactions with the world. As a minor downside, there were several side-plots established for their contribution to the main plot, and then dropped like a hot rock afterwards - I would have liked to see a little completion in those plots as well.
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