Excerpt from The Remarkable Courtship of General Tom Thumb by Nicholas Rinaldi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It was fun. I was learning new words, and after each session, I had to write ten sentences, each with one of the new words in it. I enjoyed that. New words and new facts, and how to write and remember.

On the fourth floor there was a scale model of Paris with an enormous number of tiny buildings carved from wood. Kwink had spent an entire year in Paris, and he pointed out some of the famous buildings and streets. Paris, yes. I was hungry for it, and worked harder than ever on the French words and phrases that Kwink taught me.

* * *

Barnum's office was on the second floor, next to the Hall of Mirrors, which held trick mirrors that made you look like anything but yourself. In one I was a giant, in another I was shorter than a puppy. In yet another, my head was larger than my body, and I was upside down— amusing, yes, but to see myself like that made me dizzy.

On the same floor, there was a whole gallery of wax figures, including George Washington and all of the Presidents, along with Queen Victoria, Napoléon, Jesus, Moses, and the Siamese Twins. And, toward the end of my first year at the Museum, a wax replica of me in my blue Napoléon uniform—General Tom Thumb.

Best of all, though, in that five-story house of wonders, it was the people—the acrobats, jugglers, trapeze artists, ropedancers. The Tattooed Man, and the Albino Lady. The sword-swallower and the fireeater, the fortune-teller, and the Bearded Lady. There was a dancer, Josephine West, with a beauty mark on her right cheek. Whenever our paths crossed, anywhere in the Museum, she would pick me up and waltz me around, swinging me in the air as if I were a poodle.

And Nellis, the Man Without Arms, who could write with his toes, pencil on paper. With those remarkable toes, he could load a pistol and pull the trigger. When he was in a shooting mood, he displayed his talent in the basement shooting gallery, hitting the bull's-eye with every shot. He wanted me to be part of his act, shooting an apple off my head—and, with youthful enthusiasm, I considered it an exciting idea. But Barnum forbade it, and threatened to fire Nellis if he ever came near me with a gun.

The Snake-Charmer let me handle her snake, and the African Earth Woman let me pound on her tom-toms. The Albino Lady followed me on all fours and blew her hot breath on the back of my neck.

Zobeide Luti, one of the Circassian Ladies, let me watch while she washed her hair with beer so it would frizz up and make her look Circassian. She was beautiful, as Circassian women are said to be. But, as I later learned, she wasn't from Circassia—if, in fact, there even was such a place. She was from Beekman Street, within walking distance of the Museum. The other Circassians were also local—one from Brooklyn, one from the Bronx. Two were Hungarian, from Long Island. Years later, they were still around and still beautiful, still washing their hair with beer.

As the days and weeks wore on, the person who interested me more and more was the house magician, Mary Darling. She had slender arms, long fingers, hazel eyes, and an exotic head of red hair. She was an ingenious conjuror. She could make feathers fall from the ceiling like flakes of snow, then make them disappear. One day she pulled a white mouse out of my ear and put it in my pocket—but when I reached in, there was nothing there.

Hers was a sad story. She had stolen a bunch of money from her father, and ran off with a lover, who took the money and abandoned her. She went crazy for a while and spent some time in an asylum. But she recovered, and there she was, at the Museum, and thriving.

As I watched her rehearse her tricks, my feelings for her grew. But I came to understand, painfully, that she had no real interest in me. I was a toy, a child, a dwarf—much loved by the crowds, but still, to her, merely a dwarf, an amusing distraction. She wanted to incorporate me into her act, pulling me out of a big straw hat, then making me vanish in an empty whisky keg. But Barnum killed it. He thought it would demean me and tarnish my image.

Excerpted from The Remarkable Courtship of General Tom Thumb by Nicholas Rinaldi. Copyright © 2014 by Nicholas Rinaldi. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.