Skip to main content

The Unknowns

By

by Benedict Carey
New York: Amulet Books, 2009. 259 pgs.

Mysteries using numbers are all the rage now, and this one is prime (get it? hahahahahahahahahahaha). A ragtag collection of trailers housing workers at the Folsom Energy Plant doesn't even have its own name: Folsom Adjacent is where our young heroes live, in a dusty, nasty place with no trees and nothing to do. Until people start disappearing. Lady Di Smith and Tom Jones (so-called because his Arabic name is unpronounceable to the Adjacenites) are on the case because one of the missing is their friend and tutor Mrs. Clarke. Luckily she has left mathematical clues for the children, and has prepared them to be able to solve them. The equations they come up with lead them (and soon some other helpers) into dangerous territory--the outlet pipes of the plant which fill with and purge hot water at regular intervals--and from there to a plot to scam the government and destroy the Adjacent community. Lady Di and Tom Jones are quirky, endearing characters who become their best selves during the frantic frightening action of the story, as do their oddball friends and neighbors. Carey, a writer for the New York Times, with a mathematics background has done a remarkable job of solving for the "unknowns" in this story: the numbers needed to solve the puzzle, as well as the invisible, beautiful, unknown kids of the trailer park.


Labels:

Comments

2112 said…
I liked the idea of this story. However, I felt the math bogged the action down too much and I had to skip ahead a few times to rejoin the flow of the story. The two main characters were well done and I enjoyed seeing different elements of their friendship. I also liked how the trailer kids all joined together to fight their common enemies despite all their differences.
June 22, 2009 at 6:29 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Blood in the Water

By
Blood in the Water By Tiffany D. Jackson New York: Scholastic, 2025. Fiction. 255 pages. 12-year-old Kaylani McKinnon can't help but feel like a fish out of water. She's a Brooklyn girl spending her summer on Martha's Vineyard surrounded by wealthy family friends in their mansion. All she really wants is to stay home all summer where she her incarcerated father can easily reach her, and she can keep working to find ways to prove him innocent of fraud and embezzlement. Despite her protests, she finds herself on the island with the snooty granddaughters of her host. Soon after Kaylani's arrival, a popular teen boy is found murdered and she decides to conduct her own investigation. As she tries to discover what happened to Chadwick Cooper, Kaylani finds that not everything on Martha's Vineyard is as perfect as it appears. Thrillers for middle grade readers can be hard to find, but Tiffany D. Jackson succeeds in her first middle grade novel. A quick moving plot, tight d...
Post a Comment
Read more

National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry

By DeeDee
National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry Edited by J. Patrick Lewis National Geographic, 2012, 183 p. Poetry In this beautiful poetry collection, the National Children's Poet Laureate, J. Patrick Lewis, has teamed up with the amazing photographers at National Geographic. The result is 200 poems about animals, all illustrated with stunning nature photography.  The poems are well chosen and include rhyming, free verse, and shape poetry. Some of the poems are funny, many are contemplative and all are nicely typeset on top of the full color photographs. One of my favorites is a shape poem about flamingos, with a photograph of a flock of flamingos which seem to be standing the the shape of a flamingo (how did they do that?).  Lewis ends the collection with a brief but interesting section about writing animal poetry.  This selection is sure to turn any animal lover into a poetry lover.
Post a Comment
Read more