The Atomic Weight of Secrets

Gr 5—7—Five brilliant children from different countries are brought together under mysterious circumstances in 1903 and establish, or perhaps reestablish, the Young Inventor's Guild. Each family was visited by men dressed in outlandish black costumes before being taken to Dayton, OH, where the youngsters are assigned homes tended by loving nannies (who provide amazing food tantalizingly described) and go to school. For the first time, they are among intellectual peers and would be content to conduct their scientific experiments, if not for worrying about their parents, who were abruptly taken from them by the men in black. Did the men kidnap the adults or are they protecting the children while their parents do important research? Do their parents need rescue or are they busy with their scientific careers? The uncertainty the children feel will resonate with readers who feel overlooked by busy parents. Each child's history is explored in an individual chapter in which small details like a nursery rhyme in common or special tokens are discovered and are clearly part of a larger story arc minimally explored in this book. Partially convinced that they must rescue their parents, they invent and build the first airplane as a means of escaping (but due to their dangerous circumstances they give the prototype and plans to the Wright brothers). The men in black are more frustrating than frightening, and it is not until a more menacing villain appears in the final pages that any tension appears in the plotline.—Caroline Tesauro, Radford Public Library, VA