A light, clean read. Good book for girls trying to find their way in middle school. Not-too-horrific case of bullying, but enough to touch on the topic and make you feel for the main character. I kind of disliked the main character and the way she treated her friend, Franklin, but that is kind of the whole point: her growth as a person and as a friend.Booktalk: (Show a key.) Imagine that your house has a whole floor of locked rooms on it that have been locked your whole life. Then you find a key with your name on it. And it opens one of those locked rooms. What do you think would be inside? In this book, that's exactly what happens to Elise. Someone is leaving her keys to the rooms locked in her aunt and uncle's barn. As she opens each room, she finds a message left for her by her father--who died when she was just four years old. Elise is trying desperately to understand what her father's trying to tell her with each room. She's never needed her father's messages more because this year is really rough for her. Elise is starting middle school, and she's being bullied by the very popular Amanda, the girl she has to share a locker with, and she's starting to doubt her friendship with her best friend, Franklin. Franklin and Elise spent the summer catching frogs and looking at swamp water under a microscope, making home-made ice cream, pretending to find the cure to cancer and pretending to be "knights"... But now that she's in middle school, Elise is starting to be embarrassed of her friendship with Franklin because Amanda makes fun of Franklin and Elise. Amanda calls Elise "scabular" because she shows up to school the first day with scabbed knees (which she got playing a game with Franklin) and then Amanda begins to squish Elise's lunch each and every day. Elise starts to dread school and skip class and not do her homework and worst of all... she starts to doubt her friendship with Franklin. Maybe if she wasn't friends with a "dweebus" like Franklin, people wouldn't make fun of her and call her "scabular." Maybe if she didn't hang out with Franklin, people would like her. As she opens each of the rooms her father left her, she's trying to make her way through her first year of middle school and maybe find the answers to all the questions she has about what it means to be a good friend and still make it out of middle school alive. I'm pretty divided on how I feel about this book, but I liked it, overall. Twelve-year-old Elise and her best friend Franklin are about to start middle school, but they're loath to grow up. They prefer collecting pond scum and playing imaginary games in the woods near their rural homes over preteen trends like music and clothes. This naturally makes them (and Elise in particular) targets for bullying at school. The one thing that keeps them going is a mystery at Elise's house. Her parents are both long gone, and she lives with an aunt and uncle. Every year, she gets a letter from her father for her birthday, and hasn't wondered too much about what else there might be of his in the old farmhouse... until she finds a key in the barn labeled with her name. What will Elise find? And can she survive her first year of middle school?I agree with other reviewers that Franklin and Elise read a little too young for me. Even given that they don't want to grow up and are comfortable with being children, I would peg them as nine or ten max, not twelve. At twelve, kids (even dorky kids) are much more self-aware than Elise and Franklin are. Other reviewers also take issue with the fact that a lot of Elise's problems at school, particularly her issues with homework, are her own fault, but I think that's something that a lot of kids can relate to. Preteens generally aren't the best at thinking ahead, so I think that aspect is probably relatable. And I enjoyed the bittersweet mystery of the keys in the barn.If Elise and Franklin had been written a little more realistically, I think this would get four stars from me. But much like Kody Keplinger's The Swift Boys & Me, the characters just read much younger than the author said they were supposed to be.Great narration on the audiobook!
Do You like book Eight Keys (2011)?
It was pretty good. It showed how growing up can really affect a child.
—andee
I loved the book, it was sad with thrilling events.
—stephanieruiz
