Thought for the day:
“It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way
atcha write it.” ~Jack Kerouac~
A gift for my writer friends:
Here is a link I hope you
will find valuable.
For my fabulous giveaway, the winner is Pat Kahn! (Cue the trumpets please!)
Congratulations, Pat. I will be sending you a copy of
All Different Kinds of Free. I’m sure you’ll love it. I have
another giveaway for today, so stay tuned.
I was contacted a month or so ago by
Craig R. Everett, a writer who teaches finances in the MBA program at Pepperdine University. He wanted to
know if I might be willing to read and review his middle-grade novel. He said
he had come up with the idea of teaching kids about money, building wealth
through saving and investing, and the financial world with an urban/contemporary fantasy novel. It was an unusual premise, so I agreed.
The book opens on a train with a murder of a young mother by
a man with paranormal powers. The woman has left behind a six-month old baby
who is swooped up by social services. This is a strange opening for a
middle-grade novel, but intriguing.
Toby Gold and the Secret Fortune is a story of thirteen-year-old Toby, a seventh grader in
Wallingford, Connecticut. He has just been removed from his ninth foster home
and is on his way to his tenth. Toby, an orphan, has no information about his
parents. The readers know what’s going on from the first chapter, but Toby has
no idea. By the time Toby is in his new foster home, the only constants in his
short life have been a caring social worker and two friends he has had since
kindergarten – Marc, a computer geek, and Bidge, a super athletic girl Toby is
just starting to notice is a
girl,
and not just a buddy.
Toby’s new foster home is okay. He has a room of his own and
his foster parents seem nice, but his foster brother, Eddie, is pretty much
like Eddie Haskell on steroids and makes it clear to Toby that Eddie sees his
job as one of making Toby’s life a living hell. Since Eddie forces Toby to give
up his allowance to Eddie, Toby ends up taking a job as a dog walker. (One of
the most fun scenes in the book is how Toby and his two friends get Eddie under
control.) Toby has to earn money because he has a plan for financial
independence through saving and investing. The people for whom he works are a
bit strange, but the readers immediately recognize the man as the killer from
the first chapter.
Toby, who is a math whiz but a lazy student and who watches
the financial channel like other kids watch the Cartoon Network, discovers that
someone is sending him messages encoded in the ticker strip at the bottom of
the screen during trading hours. Toby’s special gifts with math allow him to
decode the messages, and he discovers whoever is sending the messages knows who
his parents are and seems to have big plans for him.
Toby is invited to apply for Choate, a private school in
Wallingford. He gets a perfect score on the math section of the entrance exam and
is offered a full scholarship. He does have to work a few hours a week in a
work-study program to cover his room and board, but is given a special job
working for the guy for whom he walks dogs, Jack Leonard. (Remember that killer
I mentioned?) Leonard is an investment expert and manages the investments of
Choate’s endowment, in excess of $250 million. Toby is given a key to Leonard’s
office and is told to read all the files and familiarize himself with the
financial files of Choate. What Toby does discover is one piece of paper that
doesn’t belong in the file and sends him on a quest.
“Toby felt confused and powerless, and
he didn’t like that. Confused and powerless had been the story of his life. Five
minutes ago, he had a good job and a bright future for the first time in his
life. Now, once again, he was back to confused and powerless.”
When Toby tells Marc about what he has found, Marc does some
research and discovers the reports on the account are being sent to a post
office box that is in the name of Toby Gold! Toby has no idea about the post
box or the account. After he has gone through all the files in Jack Leonard’s
office at Choate, he decides he has to go through his files at the Leonard’s
home. There he discovers a whole lot of other accounts, all of which lead back
to that post office box in his name. The plot thickens. I don’t want to give up
too much. You can read it for yourselves.
Kids can learn a lot about saving, investing, and finances by
reading this book. There is a lot of mystery and humor, but it will take a
fairly sophisticated middle-grade reader to stick with it. There are a few
writing problems such as some jarring point of view shifts, but overall it’s
well-written and interesting. The mystery is pretty compelling.
When the author contacted me, I asked him to sign the book
and promised I would give it away when the review ran, so here is your chance
to own a nice autographed hard-cover copy of
Toby Gold and the Secret Fortune. Just leave a comment and I’ll put
your name in the hat. Blog, link on Facebook, or Tweet a link to my blog and
let me know for an extra entry.
On the book giveaway, this is for U.S. only. Sorry, but it
would be too expensive for me to send books out of the country. But please
leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you. Remember, if you have trouble
leaving a comment, click on the title of the post and it will give you just
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