Book Review - Book Scavenger (spoilers included)

Book Scavenger - by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman

published 2016

Read aloud to the 9yo

The Good

Emily comes from a family that embraces adventure and travels around the country trying to live in every state once, and although Emily spends the book starting to resent the constant moving, she seems to also enjoy the excitement and new places at least a little, especially the most recent move to San Francisco, home to her hero and the creator of Book Scavenger - an online book hiding/finding game.  She makes a friend, there is some conflict between them at one point that actually blossoms into a short estrangement, but things work out in the end.  She also appears to resolve her rocky relationship with her brother, who has grown away from her as he becomes a teen, and she confronts her parents eventually about her feelings with moving.  I wouldn't say the relationships were all GOOD (there is a lot of name calling between brother and sister, for example) but they are BETTER at the end (like when big brother stands up for his little sister).  Emily loves reading and there is a lot of book and author type information scattered throughout.

The Bad

I had to do a lot of on the fly editing to read this to my children, who are much younger than the intended audience.  There are two 'bad guys' and in the first scene they shoot the creator of the Book Scavenger game (he remains in critical condition in the hospital for the remainder of the story) in order to steal a book he has.  Emily thinks nothing of keeping a book that doesn't belong to her.  There is a lot of sneaking around.  The parents know nothing about any of the Book Scavenger games and seem to be hands off to the extreme.  Emily sneaks all over the place looking for clues and really acting, well, not very kindly actually.  There is a bully at school who sneers at Emily and her friend, and steals from them.  The older brother calls her 'phlegmily', which I found repugnant.  The creator of Book Scavenger gets estranged from his best friend years ago.

My Thoughts

Because we really enjoyed another title in the 8-12 year old middle school reading level I picked up this one because it was well reviewed on Amazon and had books, reading, adventure and mystery in it.  But this book was way too old for my crew.  I had to edit so much out it was awkward to read in parts.  The actual story of a girl who solves a book mystery using clues she finds in a big scavenger hunt is very compelling and probably would be fine for a child who could read about, say, a shooting, and not be bothered.  Everyone is ok in the end, and Mr. Griswold, the Book Scavenger creator, recovers, but this was much to old for us.  I would think in this case twelve is probably a good age for the story.  Almost every relationship was also ridiculously difficult in this book, which probably speaks to a middle schooler and their own challenges navigating that stage of life, but for me was pretty heavy handed.  Emily is in conflict with her parents, her brother, her friend, her teacher, and probably someone else I've forgotten because everyone was upset with everyone else at some point.

If I'm making this sound like an unworthy book to read, that's not my intention.  We got through it and actually we were interested to see how the mystery ended.  I think the main problem was just choosing to read it to younger children.