Audacity Jones to the Rescue

Newbery Honor author and Scott O'Dell Award winner Kirby Larson (Hattie Big Sky, Hattie Ever After, Dash) takes an 11-year-old orphan girl from Indiana to President Taft's 1910 White House in her delightful series debut, Audacity Jones to the Rescue.

Miss Maisie's School for Wayward Girls is the crumbling home to peevish girls, caterwauling girls and sweet girls--17 in all--but Audacity Jones, or Audie, is the only one who regularly, inexplicably, gets banished to the "Punishment Room." What the other girls don't know is that this much-feared room is a magnificent library, and therefore absolute heaven for the bookish Audie, who longs for adventure, both fictional and real. She gets her chance when Commodore Crutchfield appears at the school, pretending to recruit a volunteer for a "[s]upremely hush-hush" mission, but secretly hoping to find a disposable orphan to aid him in a nefarious scheme involving President Taft's 12-year-old niece, Dorothy. (This plot was inspired by an actual news story!) And that's how Audie finds herself in a fancy automobile heading east to Washington, D.C.

As keenly observant as Audie is, it takes her forever to realize she's a mere pawn in a dastardly White House crime of revenge, nor does she know she has an elaborate network of friends (including her beloved stowaway cat) who have her back when things get rough. The companionable narrator, bouncing back and forth between Indiana and the capital, recounts Audie's hair-raising exploits with warmth and wit, satire and suspense. Audie is an inquisitive, resourceful, funny and kind heroine, and readers will be glad to know more Audacity Jones adventures lie ahead. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness

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