What We're Reading This Summer: Secret of Abbott's Cave

My son and I finished our first book of the summer this week: Secret of Abbott's Cave by Max Elliot Anderson (compare prices). Anderson's books are intended to be good tween reads, especially for boys and reluctant readers, and I have to say after reading this first one, he hit the mark pretty well for my son.

The book's story was simple and straightforward. Four friends form a detective club, get a police scanner, and plan a trip to a cave. Before going to the cave, they hear about a bank robbery on the scanner, and wind up bumping into those runaway robbers while they're on their cave expedition. The boys show a lot of responsible behavior in planning their outing, some irresponsible behavior in not letting adults know what they are doing, and some careful courage in their confrontations with the bad guys. There's enough peril to keep the story moving, but not enough to make this Mom uncomfortable.

The reading level was manageable without being simplistic, and though the morals were a little heavy-handed, that's preferable to me than the sort of beat-down despair that so many books for teens and tweens revel in these days. Some parents may be wary of the strong religious thread running through the story; I had no problem with that, but I did wish the group dynamics hadn't fallen so strongly on one boy being Always Right and another being Always Whiny. All in all, though, it was a pleasant way to kick off our summer reading.

We have another Anderson book to read this summer, but my son's determined that his next book up should be his summer reading for school: Treasure Island. I remember struggling through that with my daughter a few years ago, and ... you know, this might be a good book for his dad to read with him, don't you think?

What books are you reading with your child? Share in the comments, and when the book's finished, don't forget to enter it in our Summer Reading Club. We need a minimum three patches to get our reading quilt started.

_{Cover image courtesy of Max Elliot Anderson}