LaFleur, Suzanne M.
EIGHT KEYS
New York : Wendy Lamb Books, 2011
IL 3-6, RL 3.7
ISBN 0385740301

Elise’s sixth-grade year is off to a rocky start. She shows up on the first day with her legs covered in band-aids. When asked what happened, her best friend Franklin reveals that they were playing “Knights” a game they invented. Evidently sixth-graders don’t “play” and now everyone thinks she’s a baby. Plus, Elise’s locker partner turns out to be the head mean girl and makes a habit a squashing Elise’s lunch. She also calls Elise “scab-picker.”  And things at home aren’t much better, either. Elise has lived with her Uncle Hugh and Aunt Bessie ever since she can remember, but now her aunt’s sister has moved in with her new baby. And Elise doesn’t get why everyone oohs and ahhs over that baby. Franklin keeps annoying her, and she can’t keep up with her homework and is falling behind. But then she finds a key with her name on it hanging in Uncle Hugh’s barn. Could it really be for her? And, if so, what does it open? Could it have something to do with the eight locked doors upstairs in the barn? To find out, read Eight Keys by Suzanne LaFleur.  (Booktalk by Elizabeth Daigle for 2014 Louisiana Young Readers’ Choice nominee)