Grooves: A Kind of Mystery

Grade 4-7–A surrealistic and nutty mystery set in an average community in Suburbia, USA. Dwayne Ruggles is a short, round seventh-grader who discovers that by rubbing an old-fashioned phonograph needle attached to a Victrola horn (dont ask) in the grooves of his jeans, he can hear a secret message. Then he rubs it in the ripples of potato chips and hears another message. It sounds as though someone is begging for help–but who could it be? And where are they? When his friend Kevin joins him, they soon learn that both the jeans and chips came from the nearby factories owned by Howard Thigpen, a megalomaniacal multimillionaire. Dwayne, Kevin, and fellow student Emily Holmes decide that Thigpen must be holding hostages in his heavily secured factory complex, and that its up to them to rescue the captives. Kids will laugh their way through the ridiculous situations the three find themselves in. With its crazy deadpan humor, the novel is a hoot, and one of the best candidates for booktalking to come along in a long while.–Walter Minkel, New York Public Library
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