Someone Was Watching (Paperback or Softback)

1995-1996 South Dakota Prairie Pasque Award
1997-1998 Utah Children's Book Award
1995-1996 Texas Lone Star Reading List
1997-1998 Young Hoosier Book Award Master List (Indiana)
1995-1996 Nebraska Golden Sower Young Adult Award Runner-Up
1996 Sunshine State Young Reader's Award Master List (Florida)
Runner-up for Rebecca Caudill Award (Illinois)
Best of the Texas Lone Star Reading Lists

When his baby sister disappears from the river near their summer home, eighth grader Chris fights the assumption that she has drowned and sets off on a journey to discover the truth.

It's been three miserable months since 13-year-old Chris Barton lost his little sister, Molly. "Missing, presumed drowned" was what the paper said, and surely that is what everyone believes. After all, the Bartons had been picnicking by the river when Molly disappeared.

One night, Chris views a video he made the day Molly was lost. There doesn't seem to be anything unusual here: a rest stop, lunch by the river, a hungry squirrel, a familiar ice cream van. But the video harbors an awful secret. In the middle of the night, Christ Barton wakes from fitful sleep―and begins a journey filled with fear, doubt, and impossible hopes.

When David Patneaude was a youngster, his favorite story was Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, a tale of adventure, suspense, mystery, and best of all, buried treasure. David never found pirate plunder of his own, but now he digs for a different kind of hidden loot―story ideas. David lives in Washington, with his wife, a junior-high-school librarian. They have three grown children and two grandsons.