The jigsaw jungle

So one day, 12-year-old Claudia Dalton’s father just up and disappears with nothing but a “working late” email. At first it’s just a minor inconvenience- there’s no adult who can drive her and her friend Kate to the movies. But the next day, when he still hasn’t shown up, Claudia and her mother realize this is serious. They file a missing persons report, but then receive a postcard from him saying that he’s gone to “think things over”. And since it’s not illegal for a man to just wander away from his family for a while, there’s not really anything the police can do.

Claudia’s mother has to go away for two weeks for a conference, and Claudia has to stay with her paternal grandfather, who is working through his own grief by recording messages to his late wife. At her grandfather’s house, Claudia makes friends with the (apparently ‘cute’) neighbor’s son, Luis.

And then, they receive word from her father. Three items: a flyer for the National Air and Space museum, an ad for a pizza restaurant, and a letter containing a single puzzle piece with the words “find the time capsule”.

It’s oddly appropriate, since she and her dad always loved to do puzzles together. Now Claudia has to solve a series of puzzles with the help of her friends and her grandfather, hoping that once they reach the end of the quest there will be an answer waiting.

This story is told in the form of a scrapbook of letters, pictures, text messages, emails, receipts, and transcripts of phone calls and recordings with the occasional note from Claudia to explain things in more detail. She painstakingly combs through old home movies from hers and her dad’s childhoods, trying to make sense of everything. And while most adults might be able to figure out what’s up fairly early on, this is an insanely intriguing mystery that will keep kids hooked from page one.

What I like about this book is that Kristin Levine doesn’t shy away from the real problems. Claudia has legitimate questions to ask, like “Was it my fault? Was I not a good enough daughter? Will my parents get divorced? What will that be like?” The book even explores the issues of her friends and family. Kate’s father is distant and her mother’s about to have a baby, and Kate wonders if either of them will still have time for her, or if her dad might vanish too. Luis has already experienced the pain of divorced parents. And Claudia’s grandfather, in his messages to his wife, wonders if he wasn’t a good enough father to his son, and if he’s going to mess up his granddaughter too.

Full of heart, laughter, and tears, this book encompasses so many aspects of life and growing up- regrets, love, loss, heartbreak, friendship, change, and redemption. Just like a jigsaw puzzle, this book explores how all those pieces fit together. Sometimes, they won’t make a perfect picture. Sometimes, that picture is incomplete or damaged, but manages to be complete in its imperfection.