The Lifters

by Dave Eggers

Overview

Journey to an underground world where adventure awaits and heroes are made in this middle grade novel from the bestselling, Pulitzer-nominated author of The Monk of Mokha and Her Right Foot.

When Gran and his family move to Carousel, he has no idea that the town is built atop a secret. Little does he suspect, as he walks his sister to school or casually eats a banana, that mysterious forces lurk mere inches beneath his feet, tearing up the earth like mini-hurricanes and causing the town to slowly but surely sink.

When Gran's friend, the difficult-to-impress Catalina Catalan, presses a silver handle into a hillside and opens a doorway to underground, he knows that she is extraordinary and brave, and that he will have no choice but to follow wherever she leads. With luck on their side, and some discarded hockey sticks for good measure, Gran and Catalina might just find a way to lift their town--and the known world--out of danger.

In The Lifters, critically acclaimed author Dave Eggers establishes himself as a storyteller who can entertain and inspire readers of any age.

"This book is a ripper, full of all the good stuff: adventure, mystery, and lots of great jokes." - Mac Barnett, Caldecott Honor-winning author of Extra Yarn

"Full of surprises, magic, and heart." - Rebecca Stead, Newbery Award-winning author of When You Reach Me

"[A] cozy contemporary novel about lifting spirits and rebuilding community through teamwork and imagination." --Publishers Weekly

"A heart-gladdening work of allegorical genius." --The Guardian

"A warm and rewarding read . . .Eggers skillfully handles the trope of the kids who save the town, with plenty of humorous adult cluelessness but an equal measure of compassion." --The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"Original . . . and always intriguing. . . . Eggers's story moves along briskly thanks to mounting suspense and bite-size chapters." --Booklist

A Junior Library Guild selection

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781524764180
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	04/24/2018
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	145 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Dave Eggers is the author of the Newbery Medal winner The Eyes and the Impossible, along with bestsellers The Every, The Monk of Mokha, The Circle, A Hologram for the King, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. His work has been nominated for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company based in San Francisco, and cofounder of 826 National, a network of educational centers around the country offering free tutoring to kids of all backgrounds.

He lives in Northern California with his family.

Read an Excerpt

Gran did not want to move to Carousel.

But his parents had little choice.

His father, a mechanic, had not had steady work in many years, for reasons unknown to Gran.

His mother had had an accident when Gran was young, and was now in a wheelchair. His parents never explained quite what happened, and Gran didn’t feel right asking. After a while, when people asked Gran about his mother’s condition, he just said, “She was born that way.” It was the easiest way out of the conversation.

But he remembered when she walked. He remembered that she had once worked as an artist in museums, making the animals in ­dioramas look realistic. He had a foggy memory of standing, as a toddler, in an African savannah with her as she touched up the whiskers of a cheetah. That was before the wheelchair.

Then Gran’s sister Maisie was born, and his mother hadn’t returned to work. Gran’s father had built a studio for her, enclosing their deck and filling it with easels and paint and worktables, everything the right height. But Gran couldn’t remember her ever using it.

“My art is them now,” Gran heard her say to his father one day. At the time, Gran didn’t know what that meant.

Something of her talents had rubbed off on Gran. When he was four, his mother began giving him a certain kind of clay, available in hundreds of colors, that hardened when baked in the oven. With this clay, and with his mother’s gentle guidance, he formed penguins and dolphins and narwhals—­sea creatures who shared the Atlantic with him.

There was a distinct satisfaction in taking a block of blue clay and warming it, rolling it into a ball, then pinching it here to make a fin, squeezing there to make a tail—­and suddenly, from a blue ball there was something like a whale. Gran made animals from clay when he was happy, when he was sad, and especially when his parents fought. He was never sure what would happen when his parents argued, how loud it would get or how long it would go on, but he always knew that in twenty minutes, as their voices faded from his mind, he could make a ball of colored clay look like an orca, a manatee, a hammerhead shark.

As he worked, Maisie usually watched.

“Doesn’t look like anything,” she would say as he first rolled the clay.

He would pinch and pull, and she would say, “Looks like a snake. Snakes are boring.”

Then he would twist and poke, and something different, and specific, would emerge, and always Maisie acted like it was a miracle.

“How’d you do that?” she would ask, her voice awed. Gran liked nothing better in the world than to hear his sister’s voice awed. It gave him immeasurable strength for reasons he could not know.

Editorial Reviews

05/07/2018
After his father is offered a new job, 12-year-old Granite Flowerpetal and his family move into the house built by Granite’s great-great-grandfather in the “hilly hamlet” of Carousel. Since its famous carousel factory shut down, the town has seen better days. Neighbors squabble over local ordinances and there’s a general malaise in the air. Still, Granite looks forward to a fresh start at a new school, where he plans to try out his new nickname, Gran—“easily understood, easily spelled.” His outspoken classmate, Catalina Catalan, however, questions his choice of moniker: “Don’t you realize Gran sounds like you’re a grandmother?” Content with just being noticed, Gran considers Catalina a potential friend, and when he sees her open a doorway in a hillside, he joins her in a secret, underground mission. In his latest offering for young readers, Eggers (Her Right Foot) successfully blends the real and the fantastic in unexpected ways as Gran and Catalina face a mysterious, hurricane-like force that thrives from their fellow townspeople’s sadness and fear. Black-and-white drawings by Renier (Spiral-Bound) lend a retro storybook feel to this cozy contemporary novel about lifting spirits and rebuilding community through teamwork and imagination. Ages 8–12. Author’s agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. Illustrator’s agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

This book is a ripper, full of all the good stuff: adventure, mystery, and lots of great jokes.” 
—Mac Barnett, Caldecott Honor–winning author of Extra Yarn

"Full of surprises, magic, and heart." —Rebecca Stead, Newbery Award-winning author of When You Reach Me

"A heart-gladdening work of allegorical genius . . . brilliantly rendering the bewildering stupidity of the adult world as seen by children." —The Guardian

"Eggers performs a marvelous sleight of hand, producing a first-rate middle grade adventure that doubles as a political parable for our times." —The Buffalo News

“[A] cozy contemporary novel about lifting spirits and rebuilding community through teamwork and imagination.” —Publishers Weekly

"A warm and rewarding read . . .Eggers skillfully handles the trope of the kids who save the town, with plenty of humorous adult cluelessness but an equal measure of compassion." —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"Original . . . and always intriguing. . . . Eggers's story moves along briskly thanks to mounting suspense and bite-size chapters." —Booklist

"A whimsical, fantastical story with elements of realism. . . . This atmospheric story's detailed plot moves quickly, and all the characters experience growth." —School Library Journal 

From the Publisher

02/01/2018
Gr 3–6—The Flowerpetal family moves to a town called Carousel on the promise of work and a lower cost of living. However, the town that formerly housed the Catalan Carousel Company doesn't look prosperous with a collapsed carousel in front of its city hall. The protagonist of the story is Gran, short for Granite, and his family includes his father, a mechanic; his mother, a wheelchair user who used to work on displays of animals at museums; and little sister Maisie. Gran takes after his mother by sculpting animals out of clay, much to the delight of Maisie. But now with no money for clay, Gran feels sad and lacking in purpose. He finds solace in eating his lunch in a storage room at school with a man called the Duke, who used to carve carousel animals. Gran follows the only classmate who speaks to him, Catalina Catalan, and sees her disappear into a hillside. When sinkholes start appearing throughout the town, Gran and Catalina go on a mission to save the town from the Hollows, a mysterious wind that is creating tunnels underground and unearthing pieces of Carousel's past. Gran eventually realizes that sadness is not experienced in isolation and that one small act of happiness can help spread support throughout an entire community. This atmospheric story's detailed plot moves quickly, and all of the characters experience growth. The story has some troubling moments: Gran steals his mother's wheelchair, and even though he returns it, he doesn't seem to understand the potential ramifications of his actions. VERDICT A whimsical, fantastical story with elements of realism; a general purchase for large and mid-sized collections.—Liz Anderson, DC Public Library

School Library Journal

Narrator Dion Graham draws listeners into this quirky tale set in the mysteriously off-kilter town of Carousel. Eggers tries his hand at engaging younger listeners, and Graham aids him greatly in that effort, breathing life into the central character, Gran (short for Granite), and his new pal, Catalina, who enter a secret underground world and seek to shore up Carousel. Graham excels at creating intrigue and suspense as this odd little story unfolds. His ability to depict a host of colorful characters adds a lot to this offbeat work, which is by turns fantastical, whimsical, and allegorical. Some listeners may wonder whether Eggers is a natural at writing for children, and all will enjoy Graham's performance of this story about sadness and the power of community to dispel it. J.C.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

MAY 2018 - AudioFile

Narrator Dion Graham draws listeners into this quirky tale set in the mysteriously off-kilter town of Carousel. Eggers tries his hand at engaging younger listeners, and Graham aids him greatly in that effort, breathing life into the central character, Gran (short for Granite), and his new pal, Catalina, who enter a secret underground world and seek to shore up Carousel. Graham excels at creating intrigue and suspense as this odd little story unfolds. His ability to depict a host of colorful characters adds a lot to this offbeat work, which is by turns fantastical, whimsical, and allegorical. Some listeners may wonder whether Eggers is a natural at writing for children, and all will enjoy Graham's performance of this story about sadness and the power of community to dispel it. J.C.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

MAY 2018 - AudioFile

2018-01-13
Twelve-year-old Granite Flowerpetal finds an unusual way to raise the spirits of his family members and bring happiness and prosperity to his new hometown.Gran, as he calls himself, isn't looking forward to the move to Carousel. But he, his sister, Maisie, and their mother and father head there in hopes of steady work. Sadly, that's not the case, and Eggers' text obliquely reveals that the stress of financial instability creates an ongoing domestic conflict. Gran, meanwhile, attempts to find his place in a new school. He fixates on classmate Catalina Catalan, despite her less-than-friendly actions, and discovers that she's involved in a quirky effort to protect the town from a malevolent force known as the Hollows. Characterization is slight. Maisie has a propensity for vomiting, Gran's mother uses a wheelchair, and both Catalina and Gran are small for their ages. One character appears to be Latinx; all others read as white. Limited action and ponderous pronouncements further weaken the story's appeal. Efforts at offbeat humor, such as the secondary character who blames all of the town's problems on moose attacks, serve only to emphasize the overall bleakness of tone. While the author's belief in the importance of helping others and finding meaningful outlets for creativity are laudable, the dull and joyless vehicle he's created to convey them likely won't convince many readers. (Fiction. 10-12)

Kirkus Reviews