A really interesting mystery!

Independent Reading Level: 9-12 year olds
Awards & Honors:
The Book sens Children's Pick List Award 2008
The School Library Journal Best Books of the Year Award 2008
The Booklist Children's Editors' Choice Award 2008
The Horn Book Fanfare Award 2008
The Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Books Award
The Book Links Lasting Connection Award 2008

super enjoyable and with a unique narrator, this mystery kept me interested and curious throughout. I enjoyed the featuring of a spectrum kid without making it feel weird. ( )

When Ted and Katrina's cousin Salim comes to visit them in London with his mom, Aunt Gloria, they take Salim to the London Eye. Ted and Kat watch Salim get into one of the pods...but he never comes out. Neurodivergent Ted gets to work on a number of theories about what could have happened to his cousin, who was supposed to move from Manchester to New York with his mom in just two days.

See also: A Boy Called Bat by Elana K. Arnold, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll

Quotes

I know I'm a weirdo. My brain runs on a different operating system from other people's. I see things they don't and sometimes they see things I don't. (31)

There are two kinds of knowledge: shallow and deep. You can know something in theory but not know it in practice. You can know part of something but not all of it. Knowledge can be like the skin on the surface of the water in a pond, or it can go all the way down to the mud. It can be the tiny tip of the iceberg or the whole hundred per cent. (113) ( )

I was a bit preoccupied while I was reading this, because the book got wet in my bag when something leaked, and it was the first time in nearly 50 years of using the library that I damaged a book. So, that was on my mind. But aside from that, this is a fast-paced, engaging middle-grades story of a brother (Ted) and sister (Kat) whose cousin (Salim) goes missing when they all go to ride the London Eye together. Salim and his mother Gloria are visiting London from Manchester as they prepare to move to New York. Salim ends up riding the Eye alone, when the kids are offered a free ticket by a random stranger, and never returns. The rest of the story is Ted (who is somewhere on the spectrum, obsessed with weather and the details of every little thing -- a kid after my own heart) and Kat working out what happened to Salim, while their parents, Aunt Gloria, and the police try to keep them out of the investigation. Of course they end up solving the whole thing, and opening the adults' eyes to their intelligence, abilities, and especially their determination. The next installment of this series crossed my desk a while back, and I'll probably put it on my reading list. And try not to damage it when I read it. ( )