A mystery at the museum is the perfect case for an aspiring fourth-grade detective. Early one morning before school, Alec gets to go with his father, Officer Flint, to the American History Museum, where somebody has made off with the entire cache of gold coins in the Christopher Columbus exhibit. Curator Dr. Glumsfeld gives Alec an uneasy feeling, but this doesn’t prevent him from trying to crack the case. His neighbor, Emily Berg, has no interest in detection, but the new girl at school, Gina Rossi, shares Alec’s passion for puzzles, and becomes his sidekick. The pair even begins passing coded messages, a puzzle-solving bonus for the reader (with solutions at the back of the book). Santopolo’s prose crackles, and she manages to weave in a fair degree of historical information on Columbus as she spins her yarn (and supplements it with a lengthy Author’s Note). The first in what promises to be a solid middle-grade series in the tradition of Encyclopedia Brown. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-439-90352-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A socially conscious whodunit.
One of Us Is Lying for the middle-grade set.
Four seventh graders—eager school paper reporter Nora, passionate artist Jack, talented dance team member Maddie, and perennial joker Henry—are placed in in-school suspension à la The Breakfast Club after the backpack belonging to Sasha, the PTA president’s daughter, is stolen. Captured on video entering school early without permission, the four suspects must remain there until one of them confesses. Through alternating narratives from each student’s perspective, readers learn they each have a hidden and plausible motive—and Sasha knows their secrets, too. In a setup similar to Benedis-Grab’s I Know Your Secret (2021), the four seemingly different middle schoolers must work together to recover the stolen backpack and thwart Sasha’s blackmail attempts. There is an empathetic element that adds to this light thriller: Each student’s secret also offers a brief look into a common adolescent dilemma. Set after the Covid-19 lockdowns, the novel also addresses repercussions from the pandemic. Jack, who has a Vietnamese American father and White mother, experiences anti-Asian racism, and Henry’s father’s restaurant closed due to the pandemic, leaving the household financially insecure. The author links these diverging storylines in just the right places to drive the twists and turns, bolstering an underlying anti-bullying theme. The main characters, other than Jack, present White; names signal ethnic diversity in the supporting cast.
A socially conscious whodunit. (Thriller. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-79398-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Readers will need to strap on their helmets and prepare for a wild ride.
Disaster overtakes a group of sixth graders on a leadership-building white-water rafting trip.
Deep in the Montana wilderness, a dam breaks, and the resultant rush sweeps away both counselors, the rafts, and nearly all the supplies, leaving five disparate preteens stranded in the wilderness far from where they were expected to be. Narrator Daniel is a mild White kid who’s resourceful and good at keeping the peace but given to worrying over his mentally ill father. Deke, also White, is a determined bully, unwilling to work with and relentlessly taunting the others, especially Mia, a Latina, who is a natural leader with a plan. Tony, another White boy, is something of a friendly follower and, unfortunately, attaches himself to Deke while Imani, a reserved African American girl, initially keeps her distance. After the disaster, Deke steals the backpack with the remaining food and runs off with Tony, and the other three resolve to do whatever it takes to get it back, eventually having to confront the dangerous bully. The characters come from a variety of backgrounds but are fairly broadly drawn; still, their breathlessly perilous situation keeps the tale moving briskly forward, with one threatening situation after another believably confronting them. As he did with Wildfire (2019), Newbery Honoree Philbrick has crafted another action tale for young readers that’s impossible to put down.
Readers will need to strap on their helmets and prepare for a wild ride. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-64727-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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