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Summary
Summary
The bad news: Sammy's made a deadly mistake. The good news: No one knows she did it. The delicious dilemma: Everyone thinks her archenemyHeatheris to blame. Now Heather's in a major jam, and in some ways it's only fair--Heather's pinned more than a few crimes on Sammy. Besides, there are distractions galore to keep Sammy from confessing. Like the end of the school year. And the Farewell Dance. Especially the dance, because she's going with Heather's brother, Casey. But Sammy knows that the truth has an uncanny way of resurfacing, and when it does, the stench can be more vile than the junior high cafeteria. . . .
Author Notes
Wendelin Van Draanen was born on January 6, 1965 in Chicago, Illinois. She is the daughter of chemists who emigrated from Holland. She worked as a math teacher and then as a computer science teacher before becoming an author. Wendelin Van Draanen began her writing career with a screenplay and soon switched to adult novels and then children's books. She is best known for her Sammy Keyes series of novels, which she started writing in 1997, featuring a teenage detective named Samantha Keyes. Her popular Sammy Keyes series had been nominated four times for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Children's Mystery and won with "Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief". Her Shredderman series also yielded a Christopher Medal for Secret Identity. She has also written several novels such as: How I Survived Being a Girl and Flipped.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Horn Book Review
When Sammy accidentally kills her teacher's bird, she struggles between confessing and letting her archrival take the blame. An unexpected invite to a dance (her first date!) has her even more keyed up. The soon-to-be eighth grader handles these challenges believably and has a foray into local politics, tangling with an unscrupulous city councilor over plans for a rec center. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Gr. 5-8. Nearing the end of seventh grade, Sammy begins to display convincing and admirable wisdom along with realistic anxiety about such teenage rites as a school dance. Her increasing maturity clearly shows in her attitude toward an ailing senior citizen, who lives in a decayed neighborhood that seems ripe for urban renewal. While helping the elderly lady with her dog,\b Sammy notices the local council member seems to be working both sides of the eminent domain issue. She also becomes aware that someone is purposefully throwing rocks through the windows along the street. Following a group nondate to the dance, Sammy and her friends go into the crumbling neighborhood, and that's when Sammy figures out what's going on. This is one of the best entries in the popular, long-running series. Sammy and most of her friends are well-developed characters with adventurous spirits, and the clever twist at the end of the story is sure to delight Sammy's fans. --Francisca Goldsmith Copyright 2005 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-From the untimely death of a lovebird and the corrupt politics of the school's Class Personalities election, to the broader issues of eminent domain and even murder, Sammy is once again at the heart of the action. Her disarming and endearing knack of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and her equally charming desire to do the right thing make her one of the most lovable sleuths around. While she confesses her responsibility for an accident to her teacher, she gives this description: "Sheer panic set in. But there was no turning back. No getting off this ride. I was strapped in by my own conscience, about to catapult over the edge, hard and fast. I held my breath, closed my eyes, and prayed the drop wouldn't kill me." This comedy of errors with its final cascade of stunning revelations will have readers on the edge of their seats.-Elizabeth Fernandez, Brunswick Middle School, Greenwich, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
ONE It's funny how you can think you know someone pretty well, and then something happens or they do something that makes you understand that you didn't really know them at all. My homeroom teacher, Mrs. Ambler, is that way. I always figured she was just another long-suffering adult who was sick to death of dealing with junior high school kids. I also always thought that she was at least fifty. Probably well on her way to sixty. You know, old. Then one day she came into homeroom with two lovebirds. I'm talking the feathered variety, not the gross pimply kind you see swapping spit behind the locker rooms. Anyhow, these birds would've looked perfect on the shoulder of a midget pirate. They had orange faces, green bodies, a little splay of bright blue tail feathers, and I thought for sure they were baby parrots. But when Mrs. Ambler parked the white domed cage on her desk and Tawnee Francisco asked, "Are they cockatiels?" Mrs. Ambler smiled at her and said, "No, they're lovebirds." Now, this may seem like a perfectly normal exchange to you, but (a) I didn't even know there was actually such a thing as a lovebird, and (b) Mrs. Ambler's voice when she said "lovebirds" was all soft and sweet and...feathery. Then I noticed her face. It was all soft. And sweet. And...well, not feathery, more glowy. It was not the Mrs. Ambler I was used to seeing, that's for sure. I glanced at my best friend, Marissa McKenze, who sits way up front in the corner, and she was sort of blinking at Mrs. Ambler, too. Then Heather Acosta pipes up with, "Lovebirds, Mrs. Ambler? How adorable." I rolled my eyes and Marissa did the same, because ever since end-of-the-year elections for Class Personalities started drawing near, Heather's been on the world's most revolting kiss-up campaign. The whole idea of Class Personalities is stupid to begin with. It may be a "tradition" at William Rose Junior High School, but what it really is, is an overblown popularity contest. But since popularity is the pulse that drives Heather's blood, I guess that explains why she's dying to win something. Anything. You should see the way she's been circulating through campus lately, oozing a diabolically contagious form of congeniality. She's nice. She's sweet. She's helpful. She's concerned. And she's all that with such true- blue sincerity it's frightening. Unfortunately for her, after nearly a full school year of her schemes and lies, I think that most people are smart enough to be suspicious, except for one thing--Heather's also been acting contrite. You know--she's just so, so sorry for her part in any trouble this year. I've heard her tell teachers, "I know I made mistakes, but I've learned so much!" and "You know, I'm just so grateful for the experiences--I feel I've really grown as a human being!" That's the kiss-up game she's been playing with other people, anyway. To me she's been whispering, "Count 'em and weep, loser." Please. Like I care if she wins some stupid popularity contest? She's not just after Friendliest Seventh Grader, either. Oh no. She's hedging her bets by going for Most Unique Style, too. One day she comes to school looking like a punk princess in black and chains and ratted red hair; the next she's all decked out like an old-time movie star, wearing satin shoes and a matching handbag, her hair all smoothed back. It's so transparent it's pathetic. But anyway, the minute Heather finds out that Mrs. Ambler's birds are lovebirds, she kicks into total kiss- up mode. "Oh, how adorable," she gushes. Then she asks Mrs. Ambler, "Were they a gift from your husband?" like that would just have been the sweetest, dearest thing a man could do for his wife. Well, Marissa and I may be able to see right through Heather, but not Mrs. Ambler. She goes from, like, forty watts of glow to about seventy-five and gives Heather the brightest smile. "How did you know?" Then she nuzzles her nose at the cage and says, "He gave them to me for our anniversary." "How romantic," Heather sighs. "How long have you been married?" Mrs. Ambler smiles at her again. "Fifteen years today." "Fifteen years? Wow! And he buys you lovebirds? He must be terrific." Then she asks, "So how'd you meet?" Mrs. Ambler keeps on letting herself be suckered. "In graduate school," she tells Heather. "We got married shortly after I got my master's degree." Whoa now! A master's? A master's in what? Honestly, all I've ever seen Mrs. Ambler do is take roll and read the announcements and reprimand kids when they get out of line. I know she's in charge of the yearbook and has some class with special-ed kids. Oh, and she teaches eighth graders how to study or get focused on their goals or...I don't know what. But nothing that would seem to take a master's degree. So while I'm busy trying to digest that, I'm also chewing on the math involved in this new Ambler Information. I mean, let's say you're twenty-two when you graduate from college. A master's is what? Two more years of college? So even if you tack an extra year on for good measure, Mrs. Ambler would have been at most twenty-five when she got married. And if she'd been married for fifteen years, that meant that this fifty-, well-on-her-way-to-sixty-year-old woman that I'd seen nearly every day for the whole school year was only...thirty-nine or forty? I was stunned. I mean, forty is plenty old, but not nearly as old as I'd thought she was. And she was probably also a lot smarter than I'd given her credit for. Plus, at that moment she wasn't just my boring, worn-out homeroom teacher, she was a woman who was embarrassingly in love with her husband. "I hope I find a man like him someday," Heather was saying. Excerpted from Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway by Wendelin Van Draanen 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.