Liar & Spy

by Rebecca Stead

Hardcover, 2012

Call number

JF STE

Publication

Wendy Lamb Books (2012), Edition: 1, 192 pages

Description

Seventh-grader Georges adjusts to moving from a house to an apartment, his father's efforts to start a new business, his mother's extra shifts as a nurse, being picked on at school, and Safer, a boy who wants his help spying on another resident of their building.

User reviews

LibraryThing member EdGoldberg
I don’t know what to make of Rebecca Stead’s latest book, Liar & Spy and maybe that’s good. It makes you think. Her second book, When You Reach Me brought her to the limelight in that it won the Newbery Award.

Georges, named after Georges Seurat, unfortunately has an ‘S’ at the end of his
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first name which causes him no end of trouble in school. Forced to move out of his Brooklyn house and into an apartment a dozen blocks away when his father gets laid off, he meets Safer, also twelve, who lives in the building. Safer spends his days spying on the apartment’s Mr. X who comes and goes carrying suitcases. Safer senses something sinister and when Georges’ father spies a note on a door next to the trash room announcing a meeting of the Spy Club, Georges goes and gets recruited, joining Safer’s ten year old sister, Candy. Together, they monitor the apartment’s comings and goings through the webcam and hypothesize about Mr. X’s activities.

Juxtaposed against his apartment life is Georges’ life in school, virtually friendless, subjected to bullying by Dallas Llewellyn and Carter Dixon and Georges’ former best friend, Jason.

As I said, Liar & Spy defies categorization, which is good. It does make you think. Think about bullying, think about friendship, think about standing up for yourself. The characters: Safer and Candy, the parents, teachers and bullies, are in many ways unique, some lovable, some not. The story is unique. Stead throws in some surprises at the end that I didn’t see coming at all.

All in all, an enjoyable, satisfying read. So much so that I in the middle of her first book, First Light. It must be the sleeper of the year since, half way through, it is entrancing. Rebecca Stead is definitely an author to read.
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LibraryThing member ken1952
I loved this book! Rebecca Stead writes with such skill and understanding. I suppose I identified with Georges because I, too, was bullied in junior high...and beyond, of course. And the scenes in gym class brought back some painful memories. I had a gym teacher in seventh grade who decided to try
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and improve the athletic skills of all of us uncoordinated nerdy guys. So he set up another period right after regular gym class in which he had us do wind sprints, lift weights, punch the old punchin' bag, and carry out other torturous exercises. I lovingly called it EXTRA GYM. Agggghhh! At least Georges has a gym teacher who understands his difficulties. And when Georges and his family move into an apartment in Brooklyn he meets Safer, a home-schooled boy his age, who is sure the guy on the fourth floor carries body parts around in his suitcases. A little spying is the perfect thing to save the world from the guy who never wears anything but black. There is so much more to this novel. And Stead writes with a wonderful sense of humor. The friendship between Georges and Safer is one that I won't soon forget. I loved the characters and the city setting. What? You say you're an adult and don't have time for kids' books? Read it anyway and enjoy it!
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LibraryThing member TheLostEntwife
I was already a fan of Rebecca Stead after her beautiful book, When You Reach Me. So when I saw Liar & Spy was coming out, I knew it would be something special.

My assumption was not wrong.

This little book reminded me of playing pretend, of dealing with bullies, of forging new friendships and
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dealing with change. With a quiet, leading voice, Rebecca takes her main character Georges (the S is silent) and leads the reader through a story filled with such small ups and downs that the ride seems like it's going nowhere until the destination hits you and realization dawns. I don't know how else to describe this journey.

Filled with surprises, revelations, and most of all, lessons about the importance of community and fellowship with other people - which includes the openness of mind to accept them, this is a middle-grade novel that, I suspect, will be knocking on the door of another award.

If you have middle-graders or contact to middle-graders, please recommend this book. It has such a story to tell and lessons to teach - but manages to be understanding and not preachy about those lessons. Most of all - it's fun. I mean, what kid doesn't imagine being in a spy club of sorts?
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LibraryThing member TheJeanette
This was such a treat, and I'm grateful to Random House for sending me a review copy. I liked this one better than When You Reach Me. I found it easier to follow and more entertaining.

The message in this story is subtle, and it's just as valuable for grown-ups as it is for youngsters. What Georges
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learns is that sometimes when people lie and misrepresent themselves, they do it out of fear and shame, not because they are bad people. And sometimes we lie to ourselves for the same reasons. The truth is just too scary or painful. If we let the truth come out, we just might find that people want to help us, not reject us.

Even if you care nothing at all about the message, the story is just plain fun to read. The plot is fairly basic. Rebecca Stead makes it fun, and funny, by including all the strange character traits and habits that make people memorable.

Georges has moved from a house he loves into an apartment he's not too thrilled about. He meets a new friend there named Safer, who ropes him into some activities he doesn't feel good about. Georges has to learn to stand up to Safer and say no. Meanwhile, he also learns to make a stand against the kids who pick on him at school.

I really enjoyed Georges as a narrator and character. He's one of those nerdy kids that grown-ups always like and peers always tease. He's smart, but he has an earnest cluelessness that sometimes made me laugh out loud.
Recommended for middle-grade readers of both sexes, and grown-ups, too.
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LibraryThing member beserene
Stead authentically inhabits the mind of a middle-grader in her newest novel for children. The premise -- a socially awkward boy moves into an apartment building with his family and meets a new friend, who is solidly odd -- is familiar for many readers, but used to good effect, and with some fresh
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twists, here. The novel becomes very much about perspective -- both the characters' and the reader's -- as we follow the stated events and attempt to follow what is not being said at the same time. The sense that what's not being said is even more important rises strongly throughout and, though many adults will have figured out most of what's left out, the intended middle-grade audience will likely enjoy the puzzle as it unfolds. With good humor as well as tenderness, and a climactic sequence that anyone who has ever been picked on will find deeply satisfying, this book works. That's a solid recommendation, in case you can't tell. :)
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LibraryThing member 4sarad
I really liked this book. It's one of those where not a lot happens, but the characters are just great and I didn't get bored. The pages literally flew by, and I wonder if I took my time more if I would have seen the twist at the end coming sooner than I did. Either way, Stead tells one heck of a
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story. I'll be interested to see if others enjoy the ending or wish that part had come sooner and have been focused more upon. I really liked the way she did it, but I suppose it's not for everyone. I'll say it one more time... I loved the characters. Each one was very realistic and thought out.
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LibraryThing member foggidawn
Seventh grade is not turning out to be the best year for Georges. He's dealing with bullies at school, plus his dad lost his job and they have to move out of their house and into an apartment a few blocks away. His mom is a nurse and is always at the hospital. And he has no friends. That changes
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when he meets Safer, an eccentric loner kid who drinks coffee out of a hip flask and runs an elite spying operation out of his bedroom. Safer is determined to discover what nefarious secrets Mr. X, a fourth-floor resident, is hiding, and he recruits Georges to help with the mission. Of course, Safer is hiding some secrets himself -- as are a few other people in the story.

The main thing that strikes me about this book is that it feels so true. Georges' feelings, his interactions with parents, teachers, and friends, his reactions to certain revelations at the end of the story -- all of them feel right and possible. This book doesn't have the sci-fi oomph of When You Reach Me, but it has all of the good qualities that I'm coming to expect from Rebecca Stead's writing. Fans of the middle-grade chapter book, don't miss this one!
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LibraryThing member agrudzien
Georges has just moved, not far, but certainly far enough to change his life. He still goes to the same school, but now instead of coming home to his house and his dream room, he comes home to his small and borring apartment. The only thing saving him is the kid who lives one floor up and is in
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charge of the "Spy Club." Safer tells him of the strange Mr. X who may or may not be carrying bodies out of the building. As Georges learns more about Mr. X, he also learns more about Safer and wonders exactly what is going on in his new home...

I really liked the multiple stories being told at the same time, despite the fact that it was just one kid during a few-week time span. There was just enough happening at once to make it feel like real-life, and he handled all of his troubles in a realistic way (although a little solve-the-problem-to-finish-the-story). I enjoyed all the layers of Georges' life and think he will be a relatable character for readers.
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LibraryThing member porch_reader
Georges is a seventh-grader who is dealing with all of the challenges that come with that stage of life (making friends, dealing with bullies, connecting with parents) along with the added challenges of moving to a new apartment after his father lost his job as an architect and his mother started
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working double shifts as a nurse. The one good thing that comes with the move is Georges new friend, Safer, a home-schooled boy who spys on the other residents in the apartment. But as Georges gets pulled deeper and deeper into Safer's spying, he soon realizes that he may be in over his head and that dealing with both normal seventh-grade stressors and bigger dangers requires him to figure out who he can trust.

I think Rebecca Stead is an excellent writer. Both in this book and in her Newberry Medal winner When You Reach Me, she puts middle school kids in extreme situations and builds in lots of suspense. Her main characters react to both the extreme and the typical in ways that feel real and tell us a lot about who they are. Liar & Spy felt a bit less developed than When You Reach Me. I would have liked to have seen more depth in some of the supporting characters (Bob English Who Draws, Georges' old friend Jason), although Safer's little sister Candy jumps right off the page. Also, the resolution of some of the secrets felt a bit too easy. But overall, this book should hold the attention of (and perhaps become a favorite of) the 5th-8th graders in your life.
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LibraryThing member michellebarton
fun listen, touching relationships, eccentric characters
LibraryThing member nbmars
As Young Adult books get more accepted by Older Adults, the Middle Grade market is becoming the place to go for under-appreciated books that fabulously capture a time and place in our personal evolutions.

At first I was a bit leery of Liar & Spy: I wasn’t crazy about Stead’s previous book When
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You Reach Me, and I was afraid this one would be about bullying and/or family heartbreak, either one of which can make me run for cover. But actually, this turned out to be a super book about the triumph of a young boy who isn’t invited to the “cool table” in the cafeteria, but who manages to turn the tables and redefine “cool” in the absolute best way I can imagine.

Georges suffers for his name. The S is silent – he got his name from his parents’ love of the impressionist painter Georges Seurat – but he is often the butt of jokes and harassment. Yet he keeps it all in perspective, just like his mom encouraged him to do by teaching him about Seurat. Seurat was a pioneer in the post-impressionist technique of pointillism, using small dots of color to form images. The viewer blends the colors optically to see the picture. As Georges explains:

"Mom says that our Seurat poster reminds her to look at the big picture. Like when it hurts to think about selling the house, she tells herself how that bad feeling is just one dot in the giant Seurat painting of our lives.”

Georges is a veritable master of positive thinking, no matter what mind games he has to play to get there. What with his dad laid off, his mom working extra hours, having to sell their house and move into a small apartment, and being confronted by bullies at school, he has plenty of material with which to work. At first he thinks everything will be okay when he is practically adopted by his nice but eccentric new neighbors. But when the boy – Safer – who is Georges’s age, turns out to be not what he seems, Georges is at the end of his rope. He’s so sick of games!

Only after looking into his own heart and mind, reflected through the mirror of Safer and his kid sister Candy, does Georges come to realize that he has been focusing on the big picture so much he hasn’t paid enough attention to the dots. As his dad explains to him, the dots matter too! And Georges finally figures out a way to cope with it all. Because who says everyone has to be the same? Who says the status quo gets to decide what the rules should be? And who says zooming in to pay attention to details won’t help you get to that big picture in the long run?

Evaluation: The characterizations in this book are terrific. You won’t doubt for a moment the voices of the 12-year-olds, the 10-year-old, and even the adults in this heart-warming story.
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LibraryThing member sszkutak
Background: Georges (silent S) has recently had to move out of his home and into an apartment in the city, he still goes to the same school with the same bully kids, but he is about to make a very strange friend, Safer. Safer and The Spy Club come into Georges life as her arrives at his new home
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and the adventures to come are both fun and scary, especially when Safer starts to ask him to do serious spy things.

Review: This was an adorable read. I really enjoyed the way Georges leads the reader into his life and his experiences. Stead did a wonderful job keeping the reader guessing, and it is for 9-12 year-olds, and I am a lot older than that and was enthralled the whole way through. The character building is wonderful, the plot is interesting and there were enough twists to keep anyone glued to the story.

I highly recommend this for adults and middle grade readers alike. I was a beautiful tale about friendship, coping, and progressive ways to deal with bullying.
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LibraryThing member Whisper1
Georges has a father who lost his job and a mother who works double shifts on her job. When it is necessary to sell the house Georges has lived in for most of his life, his family moves to an apartment in Brooklyn. When he meets a new friend, Safer, and Safer's bohemian style family, he longs to
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belong. Becoming a member of The spy club he soon learns that he is Safer's only member.

Trolling through the halls of the apartment building, spying on people, including the mysterious Mr. X, becomes an obsession for Safer and leads to uncomfortable feelings for Georges. In order to belong, he must lie. Increasingly, feeling controlled by Safer, he learns to sift lies from fact.

I couldn't help but like Georges. I did not like Safer and his manipulative personality.

This is a good book...but not a great book. It was disappointing. It wasn't until the end that I felt there was some substance to the book.

It could have been better. It was an ok book with an ending that felt rushed. The last chapter was better than all the others, but too late for redemption of the few hours it took to get there.
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LibraryThing member edspicer
Stead, R. (2012). Liar & spy. New York: Random House/Wendy Lamb Books. 185 pp. ISBN: 978-0-385-73743-2. (Hardcover); $15.99.

Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me was my pick to win the Newbery (along with a great number of other reviewers and children’s literature lovers). Consequently, I was
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worried that Liar & Spy would prove to be something of a let down. When I finished reading this book, I said to myself, “She could win again!”

Right off the bat, Stead won my admiration by teaching me something about my own tongue and using this information about false, scientific knowledge as a metaphor for what Georges believes about his rightful place in the world. Stead, you have my attention! Georges is a displaced middle school soul. His house is gone. His friends are gone. Due to their huge financial woes, even his mother is mostly gone and Georges is forced to communicate with her via a Scrabble board. Georges is also the victim of his parents’ over-enthusiastic love of painter, Georges Seurat: “Here’s a piece of advice you will probably never use: If you want to name your son after Georges Seurat, you could call him George, without the S. Just to make his life easier.” (p. 12). Georges is called “Gorgeous” at school and is often bullied by Dallas Llewellyn and cronies because of that one extra S. Choosing Seurat, a painter famous for his use of small individual dots of paint to construct very large paintings is an excellent complement to this middle school coming of age mystery. Georges lives in a Brooklyn apartment building near Candy and Safer, homeschooled students who live in a family that allows them to choose their own names. Safer is the building’s resident spy and he needs Georges help to discover the nefarious evil schemes of the illusive Mr. X. Safer instructs Georges in the fine art of noticing details: buttons, garbage cans, clothing color, and more. With scouting help from Candy (who uses her money to buy, um, candy—guess how she got her name), Safer constructs a plan to enter the apartment of Mr. X. To gain entry, however, he will need Georges to act bravely, gain self-confidence, and do things that generate heaps of ethical anxiety in Georges’ mind, to say nothing of scaring him half to death. Safer’s lessons about noticing details provide Georges with the incentive to do just that and Georges begins to uncover in the dots and dabs several very different stories. The twists in this book, built on all the dotted clues sprinkled throughout, continually delight readers. It is the voice, however, the very believable middle school voice of Georges that transforms this book into a masterpiece that will have the Newbery committee reading this one again and again.
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LibraryThing member skcramer
Seventh-grader Georges feels like an outcast at school ever since his best friend began hanging out with the popular kids who tease him, but when Georges moves into a new apartment, he finds a new friend in his surveillance-loving neighbor Safer only to begin to wonder if Safer may not be such a
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good friend after all. While not a traditional mystery, this middle-grade novel packs a couple of mystery-like revelations that will likely surprise and engage young readers. Think Walk Two Moons or The Westing Game. Things are not quite what they seem. Yet this novel also delivers far more than just surprising revelations with its well-drawn and sympathetic hero and solid middle-grade voice. Readers get to know Georges’ school life, his home life and his adventures will Safer through equally engaging plots, and while these three plots may not come together as fully as readers might anticipate, their powerful conclusions still make for a satisfying read. Recommended for readers age 8 to 12.
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LibraryThing member delphica
I liked this ... but I wasn't dazzled by it the way I was with When You Reach Me. I greatly appreciate Stead's writing - it's crisp and keeps things moving, but I didn't feel like I bonded with any of the characters and I felt like there were almost too many plot threads that didn't particularly
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seem to weave together. That sounds a little critical for a book that I gave four stars to, but I guess it was hard for me not to have high expectations.

Oh, what happens? A kid moves into an apartment building in Brooklyn, and meets a boy his age who convinces him to help spy on another neighbor.

Ha, I should also admit I was confused, or not confused as intended, which led to more confusion, by the naming thing because I have a friend named Candy (Candice) so that seems okay to me, and I know a few students named Safir, one Safar, so I assumed Safer was another way of Anglicizing a Middle Eastern name. It's Brooklyn, it's perfectly reasonable that a nice Middle Eastern Family lives upstairs. And throughout the entire book, I pronounced "Georges" as "Shorsh" in my head, because of Family Sabbatical.
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LibraryThing member CurrerBell
Liar & Spy isn't at all bad, but it's in no way comparable to Stead's Newbery-winning When You Reach Me. Liar & Spy has a cute twist which Stead succeeds at by using a first-person narration, and she's fair about giving clues throughout to the twist without giving it away, but somehow the ending
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seemed just a little too pat, a little too neatly plotted. Furthermore, the two main characters, Georges and Safer, just didn't interest me that much, though I did find Safer's kid sister Candy positively delightful.

This is one I'll be giving away to a sixth-grade teacher at my church, and I'm sure her school kids will enjoy it, but unlike When You Reach Me, it's not one that I'll be keeping for my permanent library.
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LibraryThing member stephxsu
Georges (the S is silent; yes, his parents are crazy Seurat fans) is just an ordinary boy, slightly north of nerdy, who’s trying to survive seventh grade. Then, in his new apartment building, he meets Safer, a boy his own age, and gets pulled into Safer’s strange spy games. But as Safer’s
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games get stranger and stranger, Georges has to decide where to draw the line between fantasy and reality…both within himself and without.

Rebecca Stead, whose previous book, When You Reach Me, I loved (and, apparently, so did a lot of other people, as it won the Newbery), is back with another middle grade novel, LIAR & SPY. Different in feel and content from When You Reach Me, it nevertheless pays homage to the intelligence and subtleties possible for middle grade literature.

Georges and other characters of LIAR & SPY are fairly average in terms of memorability, but wicked smart in terms of intelligence for characters their age. It’s not every day you get to read a middle-grade novel that involve the attempted English spelling reform movement and the umami taste (that’s the one that recognizes delicious or savory foods). Knowledge can come whenever and wherever, in all forms, as Rebecca Stead proves over and over again.

Safer’s suspicious and passive-aggressive behavior did get on my nerves pretty quickly, as they did Georges’, but the characters’ insecurities, actions, and feelings are all very genuine to the physical and emotional turmoil of middle school. And, as always, Stead writes a killer of an ending, one that nearly singlehandedly bumped my rating of this book up a whole star. Alas, the rest of LIAR & SPY didn’t capture my affections the way When You Reach Me did—the pacing was slower and the characters not as easily likable. Nevertheless, despite the lack of emotional connection on my part, it is a touching and impressive work of literature that fans of middle grade and young adult literature alike should consider reading.
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LibraryThing member lillged
I liked the arch of the story, especially the issues contemplated at the end of the book. But, I wasn't particularly fond of the recording. While Safer made me laugh at times in the reader's effort to make him seem a gruff adolescent who has already gone through puberty and associated voice
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changes, in general, I didn't find the reading too terribly engaging.
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LibraryThing member AMQS
Georges is in the 7th grade, and is facing a year of tough times and difficult transitions. His best friend Jason has inexplicably dumped him in favor of the cool crowd, which has made Georges (whom they call Gorgeous) the target of their bullying ("Here's a piece of advice you will probably never
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use: if you want to name your son after Georges Seurat, you could call him George, without the S. Just to make life easier."). The book begins as Georges's family sells their beloved Brooklyn home and moves into an apartment following his dad's layoff. Georges's mother must now work double shifts at the hospital to support the family, and her only interactions with Georges throughout the book are the short messages they write to each other on Georges's desk in Scrabble tiles. On the day they move into their apartment he meets Safer, a strange boy his own age who decides to train Georges to be a spy.

Safer recruits Georges to help him spy on the building's mysterious Mr. X, whose comings and and goings from the building carrying suitcases probably means he's disposing victims. Safer's surveillance becomes more risky and intrusive, and Georges must decide how far he should go to support his only friend.

Looking over this review, this is a bizarre premise for a book, but it works. Ms. Stead's characters are strong and well-drawn in all their quirky habits and personalities, and the bonds formed by lonely kids in desperate need of friends are touching and poignant. I really enjoyed it, and will be reading Ms. Stead's highly recommended When You Reach Me later this year... maybe aloud?
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LibraryThing member ChristianR
While I don't think this was as good as her last book, it is a solid entry for kids who feel picked on. Georges is one such kid, and he's just moved to a new apartment where he meets a homeschooled boy named Safer. Safer spends a lot of his time spying on others, and he teaches Georges tricks of
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the trade. At the same time, Georges is figuring out how to cope with his peers who are mean to him and is dealing with his mother's heavy work schedule.
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LibraryThing member ptorres
This is the first book I've read by Stead so I didn't have anything to compare. I loved this book. The quirky characters led me through a great mystery filled with make-believe, middle school antics and bully's. Her narrative strategically threaded me in and out of thoughtful questions and twists
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in reality. I can't wait to read her other two books!

See complete review on soimfifty.blogspot.com
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LibraryThing member beckybrandon
I bought this book because it was included in the Scholastic Book Talk video. I enjoyed the author's other recent book When You Reach Me. This book also has good suspense, and I think I love it mainly because of the atmosphere--kids growing up in New York City.
LibraryThing member stewartfritz


Didn't like this nearly as much as When You Reach Me. I felt like the middle dragged considerably after the opening chapters, and the end was so all "WTFOMG **SHOCKING TWIST ENDING!!!**" that I'm a little concerned about Rebecca Stead becoming the literary equivalent of M. Night Shyamalan. Good
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characters, for the most part actually pretty subtle aside from the too-annoying-to-be-made-up Safer and his family.
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LibraryThing member akmargie
Really cute and sweet.

Awards

Texas Bluebonnet Award (Nominee — 2015)
Great Stone Face Book Award (Nominee — 2014)
BCCB Blue Ribbon Book (Fiction — 2012)

Pages

192

ISBN

0385737432 / 9780385737432
Page: 3.0431 seconds