Missing Children
This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now!
-- School Library Journal, 1/16/2008 8:58:00 AM
January 13, 2007 is National AMBER Alert Awareness Day. The AMBER Alert Program was implemented in 1996 when Dallas-Fort Worth broadcasters teamed up with local police to develop an early warning system to help find abducted children. AMBER stands for America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response and was created as a legacy to 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped while riding her bicycle. Other states and communities soon set up their own AMBER plans as the idea was adopted across the nation. Since its inception, over 311 children have been saved. Use these titles to create a display and launch a discussion with teens on dangerous situations and how they can be avoided.
ANTIEAU, Kim. Broken Moon. S & S/Margaret K. McElderry Bks. 2007. Tr $15.99. ISBN 978-1-4169-1767-0.
Gr 8 Up–Nadira’s world is turned upside down when her beloved father dies and her family is forced to rely on nasty Uncle Rubel’s charity. When she discovers that Rubel has sold her little brother to rich sheikhs who race camels, Nadira decides to cut her hair and go undercover to find him. Using reason and cunning, she soon hatches a plan to free all the “camel kids” and return home safely.
COONEY, Caroline. The Face on the Milk Carton. Delacorte. 1996. Tr $15.95. ISBN 978-0-385-32328-4.
Gr 7-10–Living an idyllic suburban life, Janie Johnson is moving smoothly through her teenage years until the day she spots a picture of herself, at age three, on a milk carton. Was she really taken from a shopping center in New Jersey by a stranger? With the help of love interest Reeve, Janie starts to put together the clues of her earlier existence as Jennie Spring and discovers that her past is even more complicated than she could have imagined.
MARKS, Graham. Missing in Tokyo. Bloomsbury. 2006. Tr $16.95. ISBN 978-1-58234-907-7.
Gr 10 Up–Adam Grey’s 18-year-old sister, Charlie, goes missing while working at a gentleman’s club in Tokyo. Taking matters into his own hands, he steals a credit card from his father and takes off to find her in the neon-lit, drug-stoked streets of Tokyo. He quickly learns that not all is as it seems, and that friends may indeed be enemies. Frank discussion of backstreet life lends a message to the story. Fans of Japanese culture will want to pick this one up.
PLUM-UCCI, Carol. The Night My Sister Went Missing. Harcourt. 2006. Tr $17. ISBN 978-0-15-204758-0.
Gr 9 Up–Casey Carmody disappears into the ocean just as “it” girl Stacy fires a gun during a party game. Casey’s brother Kurt spends the night eavesdropping on the police, suspects, and witnesses, and discovers there is more than meets the eye in his quiet seaside community. While Casey is eventually found, readers will discover other lost teens in the story as dark secrets about Stacy and her family unravel.
YOLEN, Jane & Adam Stemple. Pay the Piper: A Rock ’n’ Roll Fairy Tale. Tom Doherty/Starscape. 2005. Tr $16.95. ISBN 978-0-7653-1158-0; pap. $5.99. ISBN 978-0-7653-5041-1.
Gr 7-10–There is something troubling about Gringas, the lead singer of the hot rock group, Brass Rat. Callie is looking forward to interviewing him for the school paper, but never could have anticipated Gringas’s role in her brother’s disappearance on Halloween night. As more children go missing, Callie jumps into a mythical world where time can stand still, and no one is as they seem. A great selection for fans of fantasy and suspense.
Remarkable Reads are produced by the editors of NoveList, NoveList K-8, and Book Index with Reviews (
