Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories-but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar ( Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).ĭriven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. Chapters are identified by word definitions (possible clues) and line patterns reminiscent of those in Hughes’ book. Early’s family reads her father is such an admirer of Langston Hughes that the poet’s The First Book of Rhythms is a family treasure and plays a vital role in the solution of this intricate tale. Gradually she, and readers, come to realize that her dad has been caught up in an international crime operation and that all of them are in danger.

Early and her 4-year-old brother, Jubilation, play at being spies, but the fifth grader does real detective work, researching in the Chicago Public Library, where her father worked, and enlisting the help of some sympathetic adults.

A warm family circle of four is broken there’s a violent burglary the three remaining flee to Helping Hand. This mystery opens promisingly with a wintertime bike accident, a man’s disappearance and a series of numerical coincidences. Taking her title from a Langston Hughes poem, the author of Chasing Vermeer (2004) weaves a moving story of homelessness, family, and the love of words and books. Eleven-year-old Early Pearl holds fast to her family’s dream of a home of their own even after her father disappears, their apartment is ransacked, and she and her brother and mother are forced to move to a shelter.

Blue balliett