In her first novel, Jennifer Chambliss Bertman introduces a smart, resourceful 12-year-old who makes her first true friend through a mutual passion for solving puzzles.
Emily Crane's parents are determined to live in all 50 states. As a result, Emily has adopted the attitude, "How do you open yourself up to hellos when you're already preparing to say good-bye?" But when the Cranes move to San Francisco, Emily meets James, who lives upstairs and enjoys puzzles just as much as she does. They take turns passing messages in a pail, up and down past their open windows. James teaches Emily about decoding tricks and Emily teaches James about the game Book Scavenger, invented by Garrison Griswold, who (like Emily) moved to San Francisco when he was 12.
Through James, whose family has lived in San Francisco for generations, Emily learns all about the Golden Gate City, and what it means to feel tied to a place. Griswold gets mugged in a BART station, and Emily finds a book he left behind: The Gold-Bug by Edgar Allan Poe. She suspects it's the key to a new game Griswold had planned to launch, and her obsession to prove her theory sets in motion a literal scavenger hunt with stakes far higher than any Book Scavenger game Emily has played thus far.
Bertman takes readers on a cable car, the BART and a tour of San Francisco's Lombard Street, plus much more, as Emily, James and Emily's brother, Matthew, hunt down the clues to Griswold's latest game. Corrupt adults thwart the team's efforts, while a kind bookseller supports their mission. The author balances code-breaking with the challenges of figuring out how to be a friend for a heroine who's never had one.
While Emily's parents remain background figures, her relationship with Matthew feels authentic. Both siblings value their independence, but they share a closeness that comes from being one of the few constants for each other in a childhood of serial moves. Matthew, who makes friends easily, offers some sage advice to Emily on their peripatetic lifestyle: "What I finally figured out with all our moving is you miss out on stuff whether you stay or go. So I just decided to... [e]mbrace how we live."
Fans of Escape from Mister Lemoncello's Library will appreciate the abundant titles and literary allusions, and readers will hope for more adventures, hinted at in the book's final lines. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness
Shelf Talker: Twelve-year-old Emily loves to solve puzzles, but her greatest challenge may be how to keep a friendship, when she and her family move to San Francisco.