Meet Ellen, our curly-haired, exuberantly imaginative heroine. Is she a world-renowned detective who lives in an 11-star super-deluxe hotel, or just a young girl living with her parents at their modest desert motel? Does she have a swimming pool and a Siberian silver-scaled lizard? And does she find Princess Zara's crown jewels at the end of the book? Ellen might not always tell the ordinary facts, but in her own fanciful way, she gets right to the heart of the matter.