illustrated by M. Sarah Klise
Sandpiper/Houghton Mifflin | 2011
Use your pennies to buy it here!
This is book three of the five-book 43 Cemetery Road series. I know this seems sort of random--to review a book in the middle of a series--but considering that I've not read any of the others and this one worked as a stand-alone, here it is.
Told entirely in expository entries--journal entries, letters, newspaper clippings, labeled illustrations, memos, and more--the book opens with an introduction by Seymour who lives with his adoptive parents, Ignatius B. Grumply and the ghost of Olive C. Spence, whose mansion they all live in. Seymour's real parents are in jail for some undisclosed reason (at least in this book).
The story is about the town's richest inhabitant, Noah Breth, who has died. His son and daughter are fighting over his money, but Noah has cleverly set up a secret hunt for the money and townspeople keep stumbling over valuable coins from his collection hidden in unlikely places. Every rare coin in the text is a real rare coin, Google-able and everything, which is a very cool treat.
Because I'm a super-dork, I found one of my favorite things I've ever read in a book--EVER--in this story. Pages 21-23 outline some facts about the U.S. penny that are just awesome and I can't believe I'd never known before. Your kids will LOVE it and will ask you for a magnifying glass so they, like I did, can verify the truth of the coolness of this short chapter.
Your 8- to 10-year-olds will love this book and I bet the whole series. Check it out!
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