I could feel his passion for woodworking and how reading would never be his strength, but he learns he has the things that matter. The mystery part of the book was ok (probably what really brought the book down for me), but what was done well was Sam's character. The only correlation would be that there is a girl and boy, but the dark place with various wooden beams doesn't show up anywhere, and gives you the impression that this is a darker book. What confuses most about this book is the cover. Together they will find out the secret of that night, and grow to become good friends. Sam has never been good at reading, so he needs to enlist the help of somebody who can read. But it says his name is Sam Bell and not MacKenzie, and the headline has the word MISSING.

He climbs up the pipe to the basement, but rather than finding his presents he sees a newspaper clipping with his picture on it. Here we have Sam, who is about to turn eleven years old, and it's the day before his birthday and he just has to know what his presents are. And though I didn't love it as much, it still had her signature style of making kid characters that are believable. I absolutely adore and love Pictures of Hollis Woods by the same author, and was excited to read Eleven. However, if you come for a family drama with a mystery element, you'll probably find something to like here. If you've come looking for a mystery novel, you'll be disappointed. Perhaps the book's problem is the way it's been spun. What works here is what Giff has always been good at: showing how some kids quietly internalize their struggles. Taut and thrilling is not what Giff is best at - this was one yawn of a slow mystery story, with a kinda-lame denouement (it relies on a secret from Grandpa Mack's past that seemed to come out of nowhere).

See? Doesn't that sound like the perfect taut kid-thriller? But it was disappointing, sadly. Could Sam's life be a lie? How can he research the truth without being able to read? Sam has a learning disability which prevents him from reading, so he can only recognize one word: 'Missing.' But he has no trouble identifying the child in the accompanying picture - it's of himself at age three. Or has he? On the eve of his eleventh birthday, Sam sneaks into the attic in search of presents and stumbles across an old newspaper clipping.

Sam has always lived with his loving, Grandpa Mack. This would have been the perfect book to boolktalk:

Eleven by Patricia Reilly Giff