Kidnap at the Catfish Cafe

Author Study Selection

Author:  Patricia Reilly Giff, 1998, Viking

Illustrator:  Lynne Cravath

This is the third and final choice for my author study, and I found it quite different from the previous Giff books.  Kidnap at the Catfish Cafe is a juvenile detective book, and it takes the reader on a hunt to find a purse snatcher.  The detective is a teenage girl who lives in Florida, I believe.  She takes a cat, who is thought to be a stray but turns out as someone's missing pet, as her co-detective.  This cat takes on human qualities and is described as nodding and making other gestures that would make one believe it is speaking to Minnie, the main character.  Minnie ends up solving the case, as I would have expected, and she becomes friends with another amateur detective named Cash. 

The entire plot is exactly what I expected from the beginning.  It is one installment in a series called The Adventures of Minnie and Max.  The characters follow the typical route to solving a mystery.  By that, I am referring to some classic mysteries such as Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.  Each book was a carbon copy of the other, just with different twists, turns, and characters.  This makes it easy for readers to fall in love with the books, but it also makes it easy for them to predict what will happen.  While I have not read other Minnie and Max books, I would suspect that they do the same.  I liked this book, but as I said earlier, it was unlike the other books I have read by Patricia Reilly Giff.  Her recent juvenile chapter books are more historical in nature, and they are more believable.  This book was dull, uninteresting, and very predictable.     



Water Street

Author Study Selection

Author:  Patricia Reilly Giff, 2006, Wendy Lamb Books

Water Street is another excellent piece of literature from Patricia Reilly Giff.  The main character, Bird, is only thirteen years old in 1875, but she has many responsibilities that make her seem older than she is.  She meets Thomas, a boy about her age, who moves into the apartment above her family.  Though neither of them wants to be forward about their feelings, she loves Thomas, and he certainly loves her, and that main theme runs throughout the entire story.  They are witnesses to the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, and Bird's father is a worker on the building crew.  Both Bird's and Thomas's families immigrated to the United States from Ireland at the time of the potato famine.  Bird is almost done with the 8th grade, and it will soon be time for her to work.  She has fancied the idea of becoming a healer like her mother, but she is not sure she can stomach all the blood.  Through twists and turns of life, Bird and Thomas both graduate from the eighth grade and attend high school--Thomas on a scholarship, and Bird on the money saved by her parents.  The hard road to this point is the crowning achievement in the lives of these children.

I thoroughly enjoyed every part of this book.  The author carefully integrated love, disappointment, heartache, joy, and family in a seemingly effortless way.  I thought the characters were accurately portrayed as having lived in the 1870s in America, and the real problems associated with this time period, including injury, poverty, and crime, were evident in the story.  This would be an excellent piece of historical fiction for middle schoolers to read.  I think teachers would also really like this book because it is another great story by a time-honored author.        

Eleven

Author Study Selection

Author:  Patricia Reilly Giff, 2008, Wendy Lamb Books

Sam is afraid of the number eleven, and he can't remember why.  He is eleven years old, his birthday is April 11, and he vaguely remembers something about his childhood that deals with the same number.  The trouble is, Sam finds a newspaper clipping with his picture at age 3 only with a different last name.  Is he adopted?  Why hasn't his grandfather, Mack, ever told him the story?  What is the secret behind this family? 

Sam has a reading disability and, at eleven years old, cannot read simple words.  He goes to the resource room every day for help, and he is disgusted by his impediment.  That does not impair his ability for craftsmanship, however.  Sam is excellent at woodworking, a trait he learned from his grandfather.  Sam's teacher assigns him the project of crafting a medieval castle for an upcoming event.  He deftly includes a new student, Caroline, in his work because he wants her to help him read the newspaper clipping.  Under the guise of working together on the project, Sam and Caroline find out the details of Sam's early years through careful research.  I will not reveal the inner-workings of this story because you need to read it for yourself. 

This was an incredible book.  I was captivated by every turn of events, and the author did a fantastic job of creating suspense for the reader.  One can tell that Patricia Reilly Giff is an expert in her field, and expert writer that is.  Sam's difficulty will allow anyone else with the same situation to identify with him.  He is a determined young fellow who seeks to understand his past, and in doing so, he makes a new best friend.  This is a story of surprise, suspense, and superb writing.  I give it two thumbs up.