I didn’t love it, but it’s a serviceable title about kids with a reading problem and about friendship and about a loving and supportive family and community. Giff may have written the book to mirror the way Sam thinks, disorganized and fragmented, and if so, I got the message. I can’t put my finger on the exact cause, maybe because I’m not a talented writer myself, but something about the writing or the plot felt disjointed or full of holes. This one is a sort of mystery/problem fiction title since Sam is learning disabled and out to solve a mystery, too. Sam lives with his grandfather, Mack, but now he’s wondering: is Mack really his grandfather? Where does he really belong? What are the dreams that disturb his rest, dreams about shouting and a terrible house and a boat and drowning? WIll Caroline help Sam find out the truth about his past? It says something about “missing” and “Sam Bell”, but Sam’s last name is MacKenzie, not Bell. And worst of all, he’s found a newspaper clipping in the attic with a photograph of himself at three years old and an article he can’t read. And he’s afraid, for some reason, of the number eleven. Sam is almost eleven years old, and he can’t really read. However, being friends with a girl is the least of Sam’s worries. Like Nadie and Nick in The Trouble With Rules, Sam and his new friend Caroline are friends outside of school but hide their friendship while they’re at school for fear of being teased. Eleven is another book about whether or not girls and boys can be friends.
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