Fool's Gold
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
For as long as he can remember, people have warned Rudy not to play in the mines . . .
Fourteen-year-old Rudy Drummond lives with his mother and half sisters, Margot and Moira—"the M and M's"—in Pyramid Hill, California's legendary gold rush town. But Rudy's got a secret: He's terrified of dark, closed-in places. So when his best friend, Barney, and Tyler, the new kid in town, decide to explore the abandoned Pritchard's Hole mine, Rudy has to come up with an excuse for why he can't go without arousing their suspicions.
He tries everything, from babysitting Margot and Moira to giving a girl named Heather horseback riding lessons. But Rudy can't stop the other boys from venturing into the forbidden mine shaft—an expedition that brings back memories of being buried alive. During this summer vacation, Rudy will struggle to overcome his fears, fall in love, and become a hero as he makes life-changing discoveries about himself, his family, and his friends. A Junior Library Guild selection.
This ebook features an extended biography of Zilpha Keatley Snyder.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rudy cannot avoid the fact that his best friend, Barney, has grown increasingly close to Tyler, the mildly delinquent boy who recently moved to their small town from L.A. To make matters worse, Tyler is determined that Barney and Rudy join him in a hare-brained scheme to hunt for gold in an abandoned mineshaft. But Rudy is haunted by deep-seated fears stemming from a long forgotten accident. Unexpectedly, the boy's summer becomes a season of self-discovery, as he gains glimpses into the personalities of Barney, Tyler and his two half-sisters and--perhaps more importantly--comes to terms with the cause of his own claustrophobia. Plucky, resourceful Rudy is a likable protagonist--and his story is as ebullient as it is adventurous. Veteran author Snyder displays an easy familiarity with the texture of life in Rudy's ``awesomely quaint and historic California gold-rush town.'' Unfortunately, Rudy may be just too sensitive and articulate to be taken seriously by what is presumably this story's target audience--middle-grade boys. While the sheer multitude of crises in Rudy's life calls to mind the issue-packed stories of Chris Crutcher, this novel never fully achieves the confident grasp of male adolescent zeitgeist that permeates that author's tales. Ages 10-14.
