The Crabtree Monsters

by Chris Wieland

Overview

Moving from Los Angeles to tiny Crabtree, Michigan, is the last thing thirteen-year-old Kat Dylan wants to do. Crabtree's seen better days and isn't what you call welcoming. Worse, the move means living with her gruff Grandpa Nick, the town's police chief, and having to look after her little brother, Alec.

And that's before Kat and Alec find themselves in the middle of a bank holdup by the Monster Gang-four robbers in monster masks. Before the heist is over, the kids lose their cash and Alec comes within a hair of losing his life. When it is all over, Grandpa Nick goes to jail, accused of being one of the robbers himself.

Suddenly, this boring little town isn't so boring anymore. Kat's determined to find out who the men are behind the masks, and she's going to need help. But exposing the robbers could have big consequences. The deeper Kat goes, the more she learns life is about making choices, including some that are a matter of life and death.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798985701302
Publisher:	Smart Aleck Press
Publication date:	05/12/2022
Series:	The Kat Dylan Mysteries , #1
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.79(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Chris Wieland is an award-winning writer and filmmaker. He is also the father of two fierce children, including a tough, smart tween who helped him find the voice of his protagonist, Kat Dylan. He lives in Southern California with his family.

Editorial Reviews

"The Crabtree Monsters is a hard-hitting, gritty middle-grade novel that grips readers from the very first page. Families are notoriously messy, and Wieland doesn't try and hide that or dress it up in platitudes; his depictions of divorce, bullying, poverty, and absentee parenting are realistic as well as sympathetic. Importantly, though, he also provides a protagonist who can help readers see the solutions as well as the problems, and the good as well as the bad. Smart, tough, and determined, Kat is a fantastic protagonist - easy to relate to and invest in." (Children's Book Review)

From the Publisher

2022-04-26
In Wieland’s middle-grade series launch, the teenage daughter and granddaughter of police officers gets the investigation bug herself after a rash of bank robberies.

Kat Dylan isn’t your typical teenager. Sure, she has boy problems and school problems and sometimes wishes her little brother, Alec, weren’t around. But she’s also smart as heck, an amateur investigator who has police work in her genes—her father is a detective in Los Angeles, and her grandfather is chief of police in Crabtree, Michigan. Her parents are divorced, and when her mother is deployed to Afghanistan, Kat and her brother reluctantly move to Crabtree until their father can figure out something about after-school care. Crabtree isn’t the slow, lazy town it seems to be, 13-year-old Kat and 10-year-old Alec soon find. They get caught in the middle of a bank robbery that lands their grandfather behind bars. Wieland has created quite the lively hero in Kat—a teenager with a crackling sense of humor who’s not afraid of a fight and has a talent for investigation. She, Alec, and their friend Tommy go after the robbers, dubbed “The Monster Gang” because of the Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, and Mummy masks they wear. Wieland weaves a tale full of adventure and humor, though the resolution is a bit far-fetched. Kat is a somewhat layered heroine. Yes, she’s funny and adventuresome, but she also can be sad, longing for the friends and family she left behind in LA. Adding to her authenticity is her ambivalence toward Tommy, who could be a love interest. There are a few moments where Kat sounds wiser than she should be at her age, as when she tells someone they need to “workshop” their jokes. For the most part, though, it’s fun to be on an adventure with this modern-day Nancy Drew.

A funny, adventurous tale of a girl who turns small-town sleuth.

Kirkus Reviews