Cybils Middle Grade Finalist: "Book Scavenger"

Codes! Attempted murder by nitwits! Hidden books! A chase through the streets of San Francisco! Musicians in a van! Edgar Allen Poe! A treasure hunt!

Got your attention yet?

In Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman, our main character, Emily, has moved once again, this time to San Francisco. She's not a fan of the moving, but she's not a vagabond because her family is running out on bills or one of her parents puts a career before loved ones or any of the usual kids' book reasons for that kind of thing. She's a vagabond because that's her parents' lifestyle. They like to move, and the kids go with them. This is Emily's personal problem in this story.

San Francisco is a great place for her to land, though, because it's the homebase of a publisher who runs a Book Crossing type on-line book finding game that Emily loves. No sooner does she arrive than he is shot, his survival left in question. And he'd been about to release a new game, too. Emily can't let that go.

Will she find the new game and solve the puzzles involved with it? Will we find out who shot the publisher dude? Hey, and what's with that teacher?

I believe two more Book Scavenger books have been accepted for publication.

There's no Time Management Tuesday this week, so I can attend to all the Middle Grade Cybils finalists.