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Summary
Summary
Ted and Kat watched their cousin Salim board the London Eye. But after half an hour it landed and everyone trooped off--except Salim. Where could he have gone? How on earth could he have disappeared into thin air? Ted and his older sister, Kat, become sleuthing partners, since the police are having no luck. Despite their prickly relationship, they overcome their differences to follow a trail of clues across London in a desperate bid to find their cousin. And ultimately it comes down to Ted, whose brain works in its own very unique way, to find the key to the mystery. This is an unput-downable spine-tingling thriller--a race against time.
Author Notes
Siobhan Dowd was born on February 4, 1960. She received a degree in Classics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University and an MA with Distinction in Gender and Ethnic Studies at Greenwich University. After a short stint in publishing, she joined the writer's organization PEN. Initially she was a researcher for its Writers in Prison Committee, but eventually she became Program Director of PEN American Center's Freedom-to-Write Committee in New York City. After seven years, she returned to the United Kingdom and co-founded an English PEN's readers and writers program, which takes authors into schools in socially deprived areas, as well as prisons, young offender's institutions and community projects.
She has written novels, short stories, columns and articles, and edited two anthologies. Her first novel, A Swift Pure Cry, was published in March 2006 and won the Eilis Dillon award in Ireland for a first-time children's author and the Branford Boase Award. Her other novels are The London Eye Mystery, which won NASEN/TES Special Educational Needs Children's Book Award, Bisto Book of the Year prize, and Salford Children's Book Award; Bog Child; and Solace of the Road. She died of breast cancer on August 21, 2007 at the age of 47. Before her death, she set up the Siobhan Dowd Trust, where all the proceeds from her literary work will be used to assist disadvantaged children with their reading skills.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Ted's cousin Salim comes to visit from Manchester before moving to New York with his mother, and Salim's only wish is to ride the London Eye, the massive wheel erected to mark the new millennium. Ted (whose brain is "wired differently") and his older sister Kat watch Salim board the Eye and are stunned when he doesn't get off. What follows is an intricate, intriguing, and thrilling race against time as Ted uses his keen observation skills to find his cousin. Checquer's measured pacing accurately portrays Ted's personality and reinforces the family conflicts, and his variety of British accents provides context for American listeners. Common Core Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.7.3 Analyze how particular elements of a story or drama interact. Instructional Extension: After listening to this mystery, students may be interested to learn more about "Interesting Things You Never Knew about The London Eye" by visiting http://ow.ly/gHXMI. The LondonNet site (http://ow.ly/GHXEM) not only includes facts, but also provides links to other London attractions such as the Tower of London. This is a good place to start a class project investigating London's most important historical places. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
A 12-year-old Londoner with something like Asperger's syndrome narrates this page-turner, which grabs readers from the beginning and doesn't let go. As Ted and his older sister Katrina watch, their visiting cousin Salim boards a "pod" for a ride on the London Eye, a towering tourist attraction with a 360-degree view of the city-but unlike his fellow passengers, Salim never comes down. He has vanished. At the outset Ted explains that he has cracked the case: "Having a funny brain that runs on a different operating system from other people's helped me to figure out what happened." The tension lies in the implicit challenge to solve the mystery ahead of Ted, who turns his intense observational powers on the known facts, transforming his unnamed disability into an investigative tool while the adults' emotions engulf them. Dowd ratchets up the stakes repeatedly: is a boy in the morgue Salim? Has he drowned? Been kidnapped? Katrina and Ted work together to solve the puzzle, developing new respect for each other. The author wryly locates the humor as Ted wrangles with his symptoms (learning to lie represents progress) but also allows Ted an ample measure of grace. Comparisons to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time are inevitable-this release was delayed when Mark Haddon's book (from the same publisher) became a bestseller-but Dowd makes clearer overtures to younger readers. Just as impressive as Dowd's recent debut, A Swift Pure Cry, and fresh cause to mourn her premature death this year. Ages 8-12. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) The best mysteries have at their centers gifted but very human sleuths -- their abilities balanced by equally significant flaws or idiosyncrasies. This one is no exception. Twelve-year-old Ted, who has Asperger's syndrome, is obsessed with weather patterns, the number of Shreddies in his cereal bowl, and the puzzle that is other people's emotions and actions. When his visiting cousin Salim disappears, seemingly into thin air -- Salim goes up inside a sealed capsule of the London Eye, a giant Ferris wheel-like ride, and doesn't come down -- Ted and his older sister (and nemesis) Kat join forces to solve the conundrum. Ted's uniqueness serves multiple purposes. As a detective, his literal, logical brain lets him step back from the fraught situation to see the solution. As a narrator, his need to observe people closely at all times lets us get to know the characters, especially Ted's family, unusually intimately. Not to mention himself: his hard-wired honesty, his never-ending struggle to make sense of the world around him, and his occasional unknowing naivetÄ (as when he lays awake thinking about "convection currents, isobars and isotherms [and] imagining the shipping forecast" and speculates, "Perhaps Salim had been doing the same") make him an especially sympathetic character. And the mystery itself? Worthy of its protagonist, with well-embedded clues and signposts young readers can easily follow -- at least in hindsight. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
When Ted's cousin Salim visits London, he insists on riding "The London Eye," an immense observation wheel. A stranger gives Salim a free ticket; Salim enters a passenger capsule; 30 minutes later, when the capsule returns from its rotation, Salim has vanished. What follows is an intricate mystery, related from the unique point of view of 12-year-old Ted, who has Asperger's Syndrome. Ted is a brilliant but literal thinker who sees things in things in terms of mathematical probabilities. His brain, though differently wired, is as efficient as a computer. It is precisely the logical mind needed to solve the mystery, and it saves Salim's life. This is a well-constructed puzzle, and mystery lovers will delight in connecting the clues, but what makes this a riveting read is Ted's voice. He is bright, honest, brave and very funny about his "syndrome" (his teacher has given him a cartoon code for recognizing the five basic emotions). The message, grippingly delivered, is that kids, even differently abled ones, are worth paying attention to. (Fiction. 9-14) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The facts seem simple enough. While their mothers have coffee, Ted and his older sister, Kat, and their cousin, Salim, wait in a queue to ride the London Eye, an observation wheel that allows those locked in the glass-and-steel capsules to see 25 miles in every direction. A stranger from the front of the line offers one free ticket, and since Salim is the visitor, stopping in London before moving with his mum to New York, he takes it. Ted and Kat see him enter the capsule and follow his ride, but to their shock, he doesn't exit with his fellow riders. This book, very different from Dowd's searing A Swift Pure Cry (2007), is much more than a taut mystery. In Ted, Dowd offers a complex young hero, whose funny brain . . . runs on a different operating system (seemingly Asperger's Syndrome) and who is obsessed with shipping forecasts and with his inability to connect well with others. After several long days have passed with no sign of Salim, Ted must use the skills he has and overcome some of his personal challenges to find his cousin. Everything rings true here, the family relationships, the quirky connections of Ted's mental circuitry, and, perhaps most surprisingly, the mystery. So often the mechanics of mystery don't bear close scrutiny, but that's not so here. A page turner with heft.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2008 Booklist