About this item
For eleven-year-old Tash, Cap'n Jackie isn't just the elderly next-door neighbor - she's family. When she disappears, only Tash holds the key that might bring her back.Tash didn't want to go to camp, didn't want to spend the summer with a bunch of strangers, didn't want to be separated from the only two people she has ever been able to count on: her uncle Kevin, who saved her from foster care, and Cap'n Jackie, who lives next door. Camp turns out to be pretty fun, actually, but when Tash returns home, Cap'n Jackie is gone. And Tash needs her - the made-up stories of dolphin-dragons, the warm cookies that made everything all right after a fight, the key Cap'n Jackie always insisted had magic in it. The Captain always said all Tash had to do was hold it tight and the magic would come. Was it true? Could the key bring Cap'n Jackie back? In a heartfelt and stunningly written story, Pat Schmatz introduces readers to a tenacious, fiercely loyal girl struggling to let go of the fantasies and fears of her childhood . . . and say yes to everything that lies ahead.
About the Author
Pat Schmatz is the author of five novels for teens. Lizard Radio (Candlewick 2015) will be available in September of 2015. Bluefish (Candlewick 2011) won the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship while still a work in progress. It was awarded Bank Street College of Education's 2012 Josette Frank Award for fiction and the SCBWI Crystal Kite Award for the midwest. It is a Junior Library Guild Selection, an ALA Notable Children's Book, and winner of the Wisconsin Library Association's Elizabeth Burr/Worzalla Award. Other novels are Mousetraps (Carolrhoda 2008) , Circle the Truth (Carolrhoda 2007) and Mrs. Estronsky and the UFO (Little Blue Works 2001) .
