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Summary
Summary
The instant New York Times bestseller from the author of the Newbery Medal winner When You Reach Me a story about spies, games, and friendship.
The first day Georges (the S is silent) moves into a new Brooklyn apartment, he sees a sign taped to a door in the basement: SPY CLUB MEETING--TODAY
That's how he meets his twelve-year-old neigh-bor Safer. He and Georges quickly become allies--and fellow spies. Their assignment? Tracking the mysterious Mr. X, who lives in the apartment upstairs. But as Safer's requests become more and more demanding, Georges starts to wonder: how far is too far to go for your only friend?
"Will touch the hearts of kids and adults alike." --NPR
Winner of the Guardian Prize for Children's Fiction
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and more
Author Notes
Rebecca Stead won the Newbery Medal for her second novel When You Reach Me in 2010. Her first novel is First Light. Rebecca's third novel, Liar & Spy, won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 2013. She is the first US author to win the Prize.
All of Rebecca's novels have received critical and popular acclaim with When You Reach Me, Liar & Spy, and Goodbye Stranger all appearing on the New York Times bestseller list. Ms. Stead's books are published under the Random House Children's book imprint Wendy Lamb.
Before committing to a career as a writer, Rebecca was a lawyer working as a public defender.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Horn Book Review
Life is lousy for Brooklyn seventh-grader Georges. His architect father has been laid off so theyve had to move, and he never sees his mother now that shes doing double shifts as an intensive-care nurse. School is no respite, what with former best friend Jason having ditched him to sit at the cool lunch table and with bully Dallass endless torments. And so when he meets homeschooler Safer, who lives in his new building and offers to train him as a spy, Georges figures, why not? Their target is one Mr. X, who lives on the fourth floor and, according to Safer, has been behaving in some very worrisome ways. Wild parrots, Scrabble tiles, SweeTarts, the Science Unit of Destiny, and Americas Funniest Home Videos all factor into this smart, slightly noirish tale. As she did in her Newbery winner When You Reach Me (rev. 7/09), Stead creates a rich world contained within a few city blocks. We visit candy store owner Bennie and experience his unique method of giving change, get a sense of DeMarcos excellent pizza, and read the eccentric fortunes that come in the cookies at Yum Lis ("Why dont you look up once in a while? Is something wrong with your neck?"). Steads spare and elegant prose, compassionate insight into the lives of young people, wry sense of humor, deft plotting, and ability to present complex ideas in an accessible and intriguing way make this much more than a mystery-with-a-twist. monica edinger (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-7-Georges is named after Georges Seurat, the noted impressionist, and that extra "s" in his name is doing him no favors. Nicknamed "gorgeous" and "gorges," life in middle school is less than fun. The seventh grader has a lot on his plate: no real friends at school and his family is moving from their home to an apartment because his dad lost his job. Mom is working extra shifts at the hospital to make ends meet so she and Georges are like ships passing in the night. At least, that's what we are led to believe in the beginning. The new apartment holds promise when he meets the quirky family upstairs whose wacky home-schooled kids include him in their spy club and dog walking concerns. Safer, the spymaster, brings Georges out of himself and gives him confidence. In turn, Georges helps Safer start to face his fears and the boys begin to change in ways they never thought possible. Jesse Bernstein voices the different characters well and provides the tonal ups and downs the story demands. However, there is one mispronunciation that mars the otherwise strong performance. All the "str" blends, like street and struggle, are consistently turned into "shtr," like shtreet and shtruggle, which is very disconcerting. A more meticulous reading would have served the story better. That said, the audio version of Stead's story (Wendy Lamb Bks., 2012) would be a great addition to middle-school libraries.-Joan Kindig, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
When seventh-grader Georges and his family move into a new apartment building in Brooklyn, N.Y., he meets 12-year-old Safer, who recruits him to join her spy squad in an attempt to gather intelligence about Mr. X, a man who resides in an upstairs suite. As Georges, narrator Jesse Bernstein is youthful yet wise: a child who's suffered more than his fair share of life. As Safer, Bernstein is darker, sounding like a troubled youth who is ready to control any situation. Of course, there's more than meets the eye in Stead's novel, and Bernstein's understated performance leaves room for interpretation. Listeners will be charmed by this memorable listen and Bernstein's rendition of two unusual and endlessly interesting characters. Ages 8-up. A Wendy Lamb hardcover. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Stead follows her Newbery Medal winner, When You Reach Me (2009), with another story that deals with reality and perception. Seventh-grader Georges (like Seurat) is living in a new apartment in Brooklyn since the loss of his father's job necessitated selling their house. His mother still has her job as a nurse, but now she must work double shifts. He goes to the same school, though, which is not necessarily a good thing, because he is relegated to the outsiders' table. Having a neighbor his age, the loosely homeschooled Safer, offers some new possibilities for Georges, especially since Safer considers himself a spy and is happy to lure Georges into his games. There are two mysteries here: one concerns Georges' mother, and the other the truth about a shady building tenant, who Safer maintains could be a murderer. Many readers will guess at least part of the truth about the first, despite the sometimes-labored effort put into concealing it. The revelation about the second will be more of a surprise and offers insight into the nature of friendship. Fresh and funny, this will speak to many children trying to find their own way. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The buzz generated by Stead's multiaward winner, When You Reach Me, ensures that this will have a built-in audience, and large-scale promotional plans won't hurt either.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist
Guardian Review
The title on the cover of Rebecca Stead's latest book is made up of Scrabble letters, along with a conveniently created "&" tile, which is highly appropriate because this is a book about the games we play and the different rules we choose to play them by. There are the messages Georges leaves his mother in Scrabble tiles last thing at night, and the messages she leaves him to find in the morning. (She works night shifts at the hospital.) But is she really leaving those messages, or is someone else? Or can it somehow be both her and not her? What game is being played here? And, yes, that's Georges with a silent "s", pronounced plain George, after the artist Georges Seurat. He played games too by, for example, putting a dab of red next to a dab of blue which, from a distance is perceived as being purple. His greatest trick, of course, being to paint in tiny dots that, from a distance, look like solid blocks of colour. Words are themselves a form of game. You have to follow the rules to make sense of them. Georges's school friend Bob English is following a less well-trodden path, giving the famous example of how "ghoti" spells "fish" (with the f sound of the gh from "enough", the i sound of the o from "women", and the sh sound of ti from "nation"). He also claims to champion spelling reform. "I spell it like it sounds," he tells Georges, having just written the word dumb without the "b". "Ask yourself: does the 'b' serve a purpose? Why is it even there?" And Georges's reaction? "But what I'm thinking is that dum just looks kind of dumb." And, on the subject of dumb, Georges is being verbally bullied at school but chooses to ignore it, never rising to the bait. "It's just dumb stuff. You know, kids being kids. I know none of it will matter in a few years," he finally tells his father. "Mom ... always says look at the big picture. How all the little things don't matter in the long run." "But they matter now, Georges," says his father. More games to play to try to deal with daily life. More of Seurat's little dots. Georges's father has lost his job as an architect and they've had to downsize from a house to an apartment in the same neighbourhood. It is in the apartment block that Georges meets siblings Safer, Candy and Pigeon. Their parents play by different rules: supposedly letting the children name themselves when they were old enough. Candy is a sweet-loving girl and her elder brother, Pigeon, loved birds. But what of Safer? He seems to spend most of his time watching a feral parrots' nest on the building opposite, or watching the lobby for the mysterious Mr X through the camera in the door entryphone system. He enlists Georges into his spy club. But in life, as in games, things are rarely as they purport to be. And, as well as the lies we tell other people in order to get by, there are the lies we tell ourselves. Liar & Spy is very short, very American and very enjoyable. It's also very funny in places, such as the extraordinarily personal fortunes in the fortune cookies at Yum Li's. ("Why don't you look up once in a while? Is something wrong with your neck?") Rebecca Stead makes writing this well look easy. She is, of course, playing games.
Kirkus Review
A seventh-grade boy who is coping with social and economic issues moves into a new apartment building, where he makes friends with an over-imaginative home-schooled boy and his eccentric family. Social rules are meant to be broken is the theme of this big-hearted, delightfully quirky tale, and in keeping with that, Stead creates a world where nothing is as it seems. Yet the surprises are meticulously foreshadowed, so when the pieces of the puzzle finally click in, the readers' "aha" moments are filled with profound satisfaction. When an economic downturn forces Georges' family to move out of their house and into an apartment, it brings Georges into contact with Safer, a home-schooled boy about the same age, and his unconventional but endearing family--and a mystery involving their possibly evil neighbor, Mr. X. At school, Georges must grapple with another type of mystery: why his oncebest friend Jason "shrugged off" their lifelong friendship and suddenly no longer sits with him at lunch. Instead, Jason now sits at the cool table, which is controlled by a bully named Dallas, who delights in tormenting Georges. It would be unfair to give anything away, but suffice it to say that Georges resolves his various issues in a way that's both ingenious and organic to the story. Original and winning. (Fiction. 10-14)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The Science Unit of Destiny There's this totally false map of the human tongue. It's supposed to show where we taste different things, like salty on the side of the tongue, sweet in the front, bitter in the back. Some guy drew it a hundred years ago, and people have been forcing kids to memorize it ever since. But it's wrong--all wrong. As in, not even the slightest bit right. It turns out that our taste buds are all alike, they can taste everything, and they're all over the place. Mr. Landau, seventh-grade science teacher, has unrolled a beaten-up poster of the ignorant tongue map, and he's explaining about how people have misunderstood the science of taste since the beginning of time. Everyone in my class, even Bob English Who Draws, is paying attention today, because this is the first day of "How We Taste," also known as The Science Unit of Destiny. They all believe that sometime in the next ten school days, at least one person in the room is going to discover his or her own personal fate: true love or tragic death. Yes, those are the only two choices. Bob English Who Draws is really named Robert English. Back in fourth grade, our teacher, Ms. Diamatis, started calling him Bob English Who Draws because he was always zoning out and doodling with a superfine Sharpie. Ms. Diamatis would say, "Bob English Who Draws, can you please take us through the eights?" It was her job to make sure no one got out of fourth grade without lightning-fast multiplication skills. And everyone has called him that ever since. While the rest of the class is hanging on every syllable that comes out of Mr. Landau's mouth, I'm looking at the false tongue poster and I'm kind of wishing it wasn't wrong. There's something nice about those thick black arrows: sour here, salty there, like there's a right place for everything. Instead of the total confusion the human tongue actually turns out to be. People, People It's Friday afternoon, last period. Gym. Ms. Warner and I have done our Friday high five. We do it every week, because I hate school and she hates work, and we both live for Friday. We're playing volleyball, with an exclamation point. Ms. Warner has written it on the whiteboard outside the gym doors: Volleyball! The combination of seeing that word and breathing the smell of the first floor, which is the smell of the cafeteria after lunch, creates some kind of echo in my head, like a faraway shout. In the morning, the cafeteria smells fried and sweet, like fish sticks and cookies. But after lunch, it's different. There's more kid sweat and garbage mixed in, I guess. Or maybe it's just that, after lunch, the cafeteria doesn't have the smell of things to come. It's the smell of what has been. Volleyball! Ms. Warner is at the net with her hands on her knees, calling stuff out to kids and smiling like crazy. "Shazam!" she yells when Eliza Donan gives the ball a halfhearted bump with her forearm. "Sweet shot!" If you didn't know Ms. Warner, you'd think there's no place she'd rather be. Maybe she's trying out my mom's famous theory that if you smile for no reason at all you will actually start to feel happy. Mom's always telling me to smile and hoping I'll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying. But I know she's extra-sensitive about me ever since she and Dad made their big announcement that we had to sell our house. She even recorded a bunch of America's Funniest Home Videos for me to watch: my smile therapy. I tell Mom to please save her miracle cures for the hospital. She's a nurse in the intensive-care ward, where she has to check on her patients every fifteen minutes. It's a hard habit to break, I guess, all that checking. I've been watching the shows, though, and they do make me laugh. How can you not laugh at America's Funniest Home Videos? All those wacky animals. All that falling down. I count the number of rotations we have left in "Volleyball!" before it's my serve and then glance at the huge clock in its protective cage on the wall. I calculate a fifty-fifty chance that the dismissal bell will save me, but the next thing I know I'm in that back corner, balancing the ball on one palm and getting ready to slap it with the other. Don't look at the ball. Point your eyes where you want the ball to go. But the advice in my head is useless, because time slows down until everyone's voices transform into something that sounds like underwater whale-singing. Well, obviously "underwater," I tell myself. Where else are you going to find whales? I should be paying attention to the ball. Just as I'm about to smack it, I get this feeling, this premonition, that I'm going to land the ball at least somewhere on the other side of the net, maybe even in that big hole in the second row where Mandy and Gabe are being careful not to stand too close because they secretly like each other. I'm wrong, though. The ball goes high, falls short, and hits the floor between the feet of Dallas Llewellyn, who is standing right in front of me. My serve is what is called an epic fail, and some of the girls start doing the slow clap. Clap. Pause. Clap. Pause. Clap. It's sarcastic clapping. You know that famous philosophical question "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Well, I have no idea, but it has to be better than the slow clap. Ms. Warner is yelling "People! People!" like she always does when kids are mean and she has no idea what to do about it. Dallas hands me the ball for my second try and I hit it right away, just to get it over with. This time it goes way left, out of bounds. Then the bell rings, kids fly in all directions, and the week is over. Excerpted from Liar and Spy by Rebecca Stead All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
