Book Review — Escape to Witch Mountain by Alexander Key

I must have first read this when I was about ten and didn't think of it again until a few weeks ago when my brother mentioned "The Warlock of Firetop Mountain" and I asked: what was that book about the psychic children on a road trip that had a title like that?? I was duly reminded of the title and that you should always treasure your hivemind! But, yeah, that's the plot. It's 130 pages of two kids running away. Key drops enough exposition on the way to keep it interesting all the way up to the Big Reveal™ at the end. The mechanism he chooses –selective amnesia– can, and does, come across a little convenient. On the other hand, this isn't LeGuin level Nebula Award winning anthropologic science fiction; Key is writing warm folksy children's stories with gently radical undertones. His characters aren't incredibly well developed; the baddies are just bad, the good guy is a priest who runs a homeless shelter, and the two main characters are a little cardboard. That said, the book doesn't…