Getting Lost is Easy in This Library by Theresa Gauthier

The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass

The Lost Library is a delightful middle-grade mystery studded with wonderful characters, brilliant plot twists, and
with a love of books and reading woven through the entire thing. 

A Little Free Library pops up overnight in a small town, enticing one boy, a fifth-grader named Evan, to take out a couple of books. Evan’s in a hurry as he’s heading to school, so he just grabs books without giving them any meaningful attention. When he does get a chance to examine them, he finds some puzzling things that he just can’t ignore.

What follows is amateur sleuthing at its best as Evan coerces his best friend, Rafe, a boy whose family has a litany of odd rules designed to keep him safe, investigate some odd things they’ve noticed about the books—not just the ones Evan has borrowed, but about most of the books in the new Little Library. The boys are soon wrapped up in the town’s greatest mystery—what really happened the night the town’s library burned down twenty years ago? No one in town will discuss it, and the pair of detectives have a lot of questions.

Soon, everyone in town is borrowing books from the Little Library, and many even donate more books to it—all of which happens under the watchful eyes of Mortimer, a library cat who won’t wander far from the library. Mortimer's as much a protagonist as Evan, as part of the story is told from his point of view, and we gradually learn why he's so connected to the library and what he remembers about that awful night that the library burned.

Ghostly librarians, visiting mice, long-hidden secrets, and several leaps in deductive reasoning tie up the loose ends but not in a way anyone could have predicted—all before Evan and Rafe graduate from the Fifth Grade and head off to a new school.

What I loved most about this book was that it brought to mind the best of the best of the children’s books I’d read when I was young. Perfect in tone, in detail, in emotional connections, The Lost Library made me smile. I didn’t want it to end, and yet I found the ending to be satisfying the way a good book should be. 

The authors are old hats at this sort of literature, of course. Rebecca Stead wrote the classic kids book When You Reach Me as well as Liar & Spy, and Goodbye Stranger. Wendy Mass graced us with A Mango-Shaped Space, 11 Birthdays, The Candymakers and the Willow Falls series. Both know how to write a compelling read. Together, they achieved perfection. Give this a try, you’ll be glad you did!