Good news – and a Sneak Preview of WAKE UP MISSING

My new science thriller for kids, WAKE UP MISSING, comes out on Tuesday.Here’s what it’s about…

Meet Quentin, a middle school football star from Chicago…
Sarah, an Upstate New York girls’ hockey team stand-out…
Ben, a horse lover from the Pacific Northwest…
And Cat, an artistic bird watcher from California.

The four have nothing in common except for the head injuries that land them in an elite brain-science center in the Florida Everglades. It’s known as the best in the world, but as days pass, the kids begin to suspect that they are subjects in an experiment that goes far beyond treating concussions….and threatens their very identities. They’ll have to overcome their injuries – and their differences – to escape, or risk losing themselves forever.

WAKE UP MISSING is a Junior Library Guild selection and has been showing up on blogs and in industry reviews lately.

Publishers Weekly called it “an exciting middle-grade thriller inspired by cutting-edge science and historical events.“

Kirkus offered this mathematical analysis: “Six middle schoolers + mad scientists + Everglades = adventure.”

My favorite reviews so far, though, have been from teachers. This book grew out of my fascination with cutting edge science (how far is too far?) and my love of the Florida Everglades, a place I find both stunningly beautiful and terrifying, and it’s my biggest hope that the book will find readers who love adventure and science the way I do. Teachers, librarians, and independent booksellers are most often the people who put those “just right” books into readers’ hands, so I was thrilled to see these reviews:

Maria Selke featured WAKE UP MISSING on her Science Friday post with some great ideas for how teachers might use the book in the classroom, making nonfiction connections with the author’s note.

And Jennifer Vincent talks about the book on her blog, Teach Mentor Texts. One of the things I love about this blog is that it packs so many classroom-friendly ideas into a single post – especially specific examples for how each book might be used as a mentor text to teach kids about their own writing.

Sneak Preview of WAKE UP MISSING

Ready to start reading right now? You can download the first four chapters of WAKE UP MISSING as a free pdf file right now. Just click here. If you want to read more, I hope you’ll pre-order WAKE UP MISSING from your favorite bookseller today. I support independent bookstores and would love it if you asked for it at your local indie.

If you’d like to order a personalized, signed copy, I’ll be signing at one of my local indies, The Bookstore Plus in Lake Placid, on Saturday, September 21st. To order signed copies of WAKE UP MISSING or any of my other books for kids, just give them a call at 518-523-2950 and let them know how you’d like it signed. They’ll ship it out the following week (free shipping on orders over $50, too!)