Samantha Sanderson At the Movies

by Robin Caroll

Overview

Sam Sanderson is an independent, resourceful, high-tech cheerleader. She dreams of becoming an award-winning journalist like her mother, and so she’s always looking for articles she can publish in her middle-school paper (where she secretly hopes to become editor). And with a police officer for a father, Sam is in no short supply for writing material.

It seemed like the perfect opportunity.

When an explosive device is found in the local theater, Sam gets the lead on this developing and controversial story—controversial because the movie theater has recently come under attack by a renowned, outspoken atheist for allowing a local church to show Christian movies. Sam’s police-officer father happens to be heading the investigation, and Sam can’t resist doing some sleuthing of her own with the help of her best friend Makayla’s techno-genius. But when Sam’s theories end up being printed in the school paper, she lands in big trouble—and danger!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780310742456
Publisher:	Zonderkidz
Publication date:	05/06/2014
Series:	FaithGirlz / Samantha Sanderson , #1
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.65(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Born and raised in Louisiana, Robin is a southerner through and through. Her passion has always been to tell stories to entertain others. Robin's mother, bless her heart, is a genealogist who instilled in Robin the deep love of family and pride of heritage—two aspects Robin weaves into each of her 14 published novels. When she isn't writing, Robin spends time with her husband of twenty years, her three beautiful daughters and two handsome grandsons, and their character-filled pets at home—in the South, where else? She gives back to the writing community by serving as Conference Director for ACFW. Her books have finaled/placed in such contests as the Carol Award, Holt Medallion, RT Reviewer's Choice Award, Bookseller's Best, and Book of the Year.

Editorial Reviews

2014-03-31
An intrepid middle school reporter gambles her career on cracking a bombing case. Samantha Sanderson, her best friend and Sam's cop father go out to the movies at a theater that's emptier than usual due to controversy over its being rented out by churches for a private screening of a religious movie, scheduled for the next day. There, they discover a bomb that's set to go off during the religious movie. Since Sam was on scene—and since her dad is the lead detective on the case—Sam earns the bomb-story assignment for the school paper's new blog, under a condition: constant, fresh articles. Her ambition leads her to write a series of witch-hunt pieces, each strongly insinuating the guilt of a suspect du jour: an outspoken atheist, the theater owner and a spokeswoman for an atheist group who has a history of mental illness. Self-righteous Sam ignores the effects her articles have on her suspects and her father's investigation; aside from occasional, fleeting moments of remorse, she faces very few consequences for her actions and sees too little character growth. Eventually, her endless snooping pays off, and she helps crack the case, which is all too obvious—compared to the scanty evidence implicating the red herrings, the in-broad-daylight clues pointing toward the real culprit make the police look positively incompetent. Publishing simultaneously is Samantha Sanderson on the Scene. Formulaic and forgettable. (discussion questions) (Mystery. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews