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INTERMEDIATE FICTION
Stead, Rebecca , Mass, Wendy

The Lost Library

224 pp. | Feiwel | August, 2023 | Trade ISBN 9781250838810 $17.99 | Ebook ISBN 9781250838827 $10.99
(2) 4-6 Stead and Mass (Bob, rev. 7/18) pen an entertaining lightly fantastical and supernatural love letter to books, librarians, and little free libraries. Perspective rotates among a cat named Mortimer, rising sixth grader Evan, and a reclusive librarian known as Al. When Al erects a little free library, filled with former library books, it changes the trajectories of the protagonists' lives and brings to light secrets and mysteries about their small town. Evan takes home a book that he realizes was checked out by his father when he was a teen in 1999--and returned on the very day of the catastrophic fire that destroyed the town library. While he investigates, readers are also receiving details from Al's first-person narration, which is somewhat unreliable. Mortimer the cat, who had lived with his sister in the town library as a kitten, now guards the present-day little free library structure and is at first plagued, then assisted, by friendly mice who help solve the story's mysteries. There are enough twists to hold puzzle-loving readers' attention, along with great emotional authenticity throughout. Stead and Moss dedicate their book to "the librarians of the past, present, and future," and many readers will come away feeling inspired.
Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2023

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