When Emily and her family move from the city to the country, she is sure there will be nothing to do. But then she finds a mysterious padlocked playhouse out in the middle of the woods. Looking through the window she sees that the inside walls are painted to resemble the woods, including the playhouse itself. Her neighbor tells her that it belonged to a little girl, Pin, who died in a fire.
When she is forced to babysit her little brother, she leaves him picking flowers in the woods so that she can go investigate the playhouse. She gets inside and finds that the ghost of Pin lives in the painting on the walls, and that she can enter the painting herself. But when Pin lures her brother deep into the painting, it's up to Emily to try to rescue him.

This one is a creeper - perhaps my opinion is skewed because people walking into paintings as a whole has always creeped me out. ( )

I have sometimes doubted how authors manage to write good stories that are short and easy for a young audience. Bauer more than succeeds in this creepy tale of a magic house in the woods. ( )

Nine-year-old Emily discovers a locked playhouse in a clearing of the woods, peaks inside and sees the walls painted like the woods with the exact playhouse in the picture, and on and on. Emily enters another world by stepping through the painted wall(s) and meets the sad,lonely inhabitant there.