Module 9: The Postcard: written by Tony Abbott

Book Summary: 


Jason is helping his dad clean out his grandmother's house and finds an old magazine in which a story seems too familiar. He receives a phone call hinting about a desk having clues. When he looks in the desk of his grandmother, he finds a postcard and another, which leads him on a journey...


APA Reference: 


Abbott, T. (2008). The Postcard. New York : Little, Brown and Co.


My Impressions: 


I liked the book, but it seemed to go nowhere, as at the end, the author is noted to have died.


Professional Review: 

"The cover of this engrossing novel calls it “a mystery within a mystery,” and indeed, Abbott has spun a multi-layered, mesmerizing tale within a tale. This is an outsized valentine to 1940s hardboiled detective fiction, to Florida past and present in all its steamy, seamy “danger and glory,” and to the power of story to capture and transform lives. When thirteen-year-old Jason is summoned to Florida to help his father bury the grandmother he has never met, he is plunged into a series of unsettling discoveries. He learns that his grandparents were never married and that his alleged grandfather is in fact a lawyer’s fabrication. At his grandmother’s funeral, he meets a collection of bizarre and intriguing characters. Then, after an anonymous phone call tells him that “[y]ou can learn a lot at a desk,” he searches his grandmother’s desk and finds a postcard of the old Hotel DeSoto, which is about to be bulldozed. Positioned on the postcard are two almost invisible dots--could these be a clue? Jason’s search leads him to historic landmarks in and around St. Petersburg and Sarasota. There, he uncovers installments of a partially-published detective story that was written by a man who once loved his grandmother and which may hold the key to understanding his own past. Abbott serves up action aplenty, hilarious dialogue, a powerful sense of place, and a poignant message about reclaiming the past. It’s all preposterous, but, as Jason’s new friend Dia tells him, “Maybe it couldn’t happen, but it could still happen.” Maybe, just maybe, it could. 2008, Little Brown, $15.99. Ages 10 to 14."

Mills, C. (2008). [Book review of the book The Postcard by Tony Abbott]. Children's Literature Independent Information and Reviews. Retrieved from Children's Literature Database via Ebscohost: http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2378/cgi-bin/member/search/f?./temp/~BnXHQP:2

Library Uses:

This book gives inspiration for a scavenger hunt. After reading this book, I think that it would be fun for the students to split up into two groups and have a scavenger hunt in the library with prizes for the winners.