In our current world—as far as this reviewer perceives—children are no longer allowed to be children. The very small are being dressed up like adults by their parents, the smallest girls even wear nail polish and adults call that cute. The pre-teens already have such autonomy that they can wear what they want, including make-up and hair coloring, and teenagers, well, they do as they please, including staying out past midnight on schooldays. Even the very young own cell phones, they receive outrageously expensive hi-tech gifts and no one ever seems to say to these children, "No, you are too young."

These children, for that is what they are, are not being offered a time in which to grow up gracefully, with anticipation towards something bigger to come. Today, language even avoids the world 'child'. Everyone is a 'kid', thereby reducing children to little goats. How sad! These youngsters are being rushed into growing up artificially through the music they are allowed to hear via CDs and iPods, the television programs they are allowed to watch, the blogs they are allowed to use or visit on the Internet; worst, they are taken to outrageously expensive shows with stars who are hardly role models for them. Girls, especially, are pushed into adulthood at an ever progressively faster pace that robs them of the innocence of childhood.

For writers of juvenile fiction this is a hard trend to counter, and one admires their attempt when they do so with an effort to recapture childhood somewhat. Banning's book, Out on a Limb, reminds me in some ways of my own childhood. Not that I lived in a tree house as the protagonist in Out on a Limb does, though I had wanted to have one. Instead, I had a favorite pear tree nestled next to the fence of our property, on which I spent many hours reading my books. This came to an end after my 13^th summer because my father died a week after my 13^th birthday and life changed in huge leaps and bounds for me, including moving to a far away country. But, those years I spent hidden in that tree reading during warm summer months ensured that I had a sense of being a child, but also that I acquired knowledge from my books that served me in years to come.

Rosie, the heroine of Out on a Limb, moves with her parents and younger sister into a huge tree house built into a giant oak tree by her great-great grandfather, one grandly named Magnus Everard Granville McGrady. It was left as the only property to her great-grandfather, otherwise disowned by the McGrady clan. The tree stands in a large estate with an old mansion that has been bequeathed to a great-great-aunt, sister to Rosie's disinherited great-grandfather.

Rosie's parents are still post-graduate students at a university—one might hazard a guess that it is UBC and the tree house is located in its environs judging by the description of the setting, and the climate—so they have little money. The move into the tree house solves a lot of their problems. Of course, there is no electricity, no running water and the family must find ways to overcome these problems. There is also the mysterious great-great-aunt in that huge mansion that can be seen from the tree. Banning finds imaginative ways to solve all the difficulties the family has to overcome, which makes this a truly adventurous tale.

What is, however, even more important is that Rosie learns some very essential lessons in this tale about growing up. After entering a new school she has to cope with peer pressure and keeping up artificial appearances. At 12 she is taught the hard lesson that bending the truth is tough work, and keeping secrets is even tougher. Even her little sister, Tilley, is in for some unpleasant truths at the end of the tale that will liberate her.

What is nice about this story is that Banning avoids too happy of an ending. She finds a middle-ground in which to end this tale without turning it into a fairytale. At the same time, this story has a bit of the fantasy that youngsters crave, if we take into consideration the popularity of books such as Harry Potter. Make-believe is still important and Banning brings an element of this into the story.