Seeking Cassandra

Gr 4–6—Twelve-year-old Cassandra did not expect to spend her summer living in Palo Duro Canyon participating in a nature volunteer program, but that's the reality she faces when her mother's work in Europe requires her to spend the summer with her father, who does carpentry for the park. Cassandra meets two Mexican American boys, Xavier and Hector, and immediately assumes that Xavier must have gang affiliations because he has tattoos, wears "intimidating" clothes, and has a "hard, menacing" face. Using the journal her mother provided, Cassandra scribbles clues and conclusions as to how Xavier and her father are involved in the theft of precious artifacts from the park. Cassandra and Hector establish a friendlier relationship, although Hector's request for Cassandra to help him with English (if he helps with her Spanish) doesn't ring true, because his English is hardly broken. Descriptions of the desolation surrounding Cassandra are apt and don't overwhelm the narrative. Facts about the canyon's flora and fauna are incorporated through dialogue without being awkward or obvious. Unfortunately, characters are one-dimensional and superficial and the mystery surrounding the missing artifacts is weak. Cassandra's enlightenment about Xavier is sudden to the point of being unrealistic, and the mystery of the relationship between Cassandra's father and the boys is rather flat. Instead of this tame and somewhat problematic work, try Elise Broach's "Superstition Mountain" series (Holt) or Gloria Skurzynski's "National Parks Mystery" series (National Geographic) for lovers of nature-themed mysteries.