The Key to Every Thing
Publisher
Candlewick Press
Publication Year
2018
ISBN
9780763695668
Pages
198 pages
Genre
realism
Format
novel
Item Type
Fiction
Annotation
For eleven-year-old Tash, Cap’n Jackie isn’t just the elderly next-door neighbor — she’s family. When she disappears, only Tash holds the key that might bring her back.Tash didn’t want to go to camp, didn’t want to spend the summer with a bunch of strangers, didn’t want to be separated from the only two people she has ever been able to count on: her uncle Kevin, who saved her from foster care, and Cap’n Jackie, who lives next door. Camp turns out to be pretty fun, actually, but when Tash returns home, Cap’n Jackie is gone. And Tash needs her — the made-up stories of dolphin-dragons, the warm cookies that made everything all right after a fight, the key Cap’n Jackie always insisted had magic in it. The Captain always said all Tash had to do was hold it tight and the magic would come. Was it true? Could the key bring Cap’n Jackie back?
Grade Level
3-5; 6-8
Lexile Measure
HL550L
Diversity Topics
Family Relationships; LGBTQ (Gender and Sexuality); Incarceration; Kinship care; Gay/Lesbian; prison; father in prison; uncle raising niece; lesbian
Main Character
female child
Keywords
abandonment; summer camp; vacation; New Zealand; neighbors; injured; fall
Diversity Impact
direct
STARS Citation
Schmatz, Pat, "The Key to Every Thing" (2018). Diverse Families. 2167.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/diversefamilies/2167