Sound Bender - Hardcover

Oliver, Lin; Baker, Theo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0545196922 ISBN 13: 9780545196925

Publisher: Scholastic Press, 2011

Synopsis

A roaring, supernatural adventure that spans New York, and the globe!

After their parents' plane goes down over the ocean, Leo and his brother Hollis are forced into the custody of their rich and enigmatic uncle Crane, a dealer of rare and probably illicit antiques. But almost as soon as he's settled--or as close to settled as he can get in the bleak Brooklyn mansion, surrounded by his uncle's dubious staff--Leo receives a mysterious package his father put together long ago, to be opened on his 13th birthday. With the package, Leo discovers he has an amazing ability. He can hear the history of any object by touching it. But when Leo finds a strange helmet buried among his uncle's artifacts, and hears a pained cry coming from it, a mystery unravels as to its origin.

About this title

About the Author

Lin Oliver is a television producer and writer and the Executive Director of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. She coauthored (with Henry Winkler) the NEW YORK TIMES bestselling middle-grade series HANK ZIPZER: THE WORLD'S GREATEST UNDERACHIEVER, and wrote the series WHO SHRUNK DANIEL FUNK? Lin resides in Los Angeles, California.



Theo Baker has had a lifelong fascination with sound. Wizened in Santa Barbara and toughened by New York, Theo has worked as a record producer, a music journalist, a sound designer, and a court reporter, amongst other odd jobs. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Reviews

This series opener introduces Leo, a newly orphaned New Yorker who discovers on his thirteenth birthday that he has inherited an ability to reconstruct powerfully vivid visions of past events from voices and other sounds that he “hears” from certain objects. When one such object turns out to be a helmet secretly developed by the Soviet military to enslave dolphins, he sets out on a rescue mission with a renowned dolphin researcher and other allies—and also finds himself at serious odds with his outrageously wealthy guardian/stepuncle Crane, a shady antiquities dealer. Leo’s inner struggles to cope with severe surges of grief and his equally harrowing powers mix uneasily with lighter incidents involving suddenly friendly girls, his adversarial little brother, and a supporting cast of broadly exaggerated thugs and nerds. The search for understanding takes him from a Brooklyn warehouse filled with secret rooms and crated mysteries to the South Pacific and leads to hard tests of courage and heart. Grades 5-8. --John Peters

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

We were in front of a dilapidated one-story factory building. On its roof was a giant sign with a picture of a half-eaten salami that said "Finkelstein Family Salami Factory, Established 1931." I was so busy staring at the place, thinking about all the disgusting things that must be going on in there, that I didn't notice our car had made a U-turn and pulled up in front of a filthy brick building that took up the rest of the block. It stretched seven stories into the sky with hundreds of windows that were so grimy they looked totally black. The only color at all came from a flock of ratty white seagulls perched in the crevices of the brick.Stump turned off the ignition and popped open the trunk.Hollis glared at me. “Leo, you said . . .” The rest of his sentence was drowned out by my own thoughts. Please, don't let this be the place. Please make this all go away. Please, Mom and Dad, come get us. Now! Hurry! Please . . . My mind was screaming but my face was still. The only movement I allowed myself was a sideways glance at the building. Painted in inconspicuous silver letters were the words, "Crane's Mysteries." Crane. Uncle Crane. Oh no.Stump got out and held the door open. "Out with you, kiddo. And get the little guy. The boss don't like to wait.”I took a deep breath. The smell of salami was everywhere. I held my hand out for Hollis and pulled him from the back of the limo.“Come on, chief,” I said to him, trying to sound reassuring. “We can do this.”This was it.This was home.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scholastic Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0545196922
• ISBN 13: 9780545196925
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272