The Key to Every Thing

The Key to Every Thing

Authors

Pat Schmatz

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

The Key to Every Thing

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