The Paper Museum

by Kate S Simpson (Author)

Reading Level: 6th − 7th Grade

In a world where paper is obsolete and magic is all but forgotten, Lydia has moved into the Paper Museum with her Uncle Lem following the disappearance of her parents.

Convinced the key to finding them lies in the museum's book collection, Lydia spends her days digitally scanning her way through the museum's library. But when Uncle Lem is called away and her Uncle Renald is put in charge of the museum, Lydia's scanning project comes to an abrupt halt. Uncle Renald takes her aer reader--the personal device that everybody uses for reading, shopping, messaging, and more--but not before Lydia makes a desperate attempt at filing a missing persons report for her parents.

The report activates a countdown, and now with nothing but a secret typewriter in her dogwood fort and a cryptic message, Lydia has thirty days to find her parents and stop the mayor from commandeering the museum. Otherwise, both her family home and the Paper Museum itself will be reassigned to someone else. With aer readers on the fritz and the town descending into chaos, Lydia needs to find her parents before the Paper Museum--and her parents--are lost for good.

The Paper Museum is a story of family and friendship with a hint of magic.

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Publishers Weekly

An inquisitive 12-year-old moves into a house of antiquities after her parents disappear in this speculative middle grade fantasy by Simpson (Ouch: Tales of Gravity). Three months after her data analyst father and laboratory officer mother vanish, narrator Lydia remains with her uncle Lem at the Paper Museum, which her family has run for generations. The gated institution houses paper and paper artifacts, considered outmoded in a world where few objects are shared, magic based on interpersonal connections has been banned, and people rely on holographic aer readers to accomplish most tasks. Under the guise of a bookmark-cataloging project, Lydia attempts to locate a clue to her parents' whereabouts in the emblem-embossed volume she last saw her mother holding. When Uncle Lem abruptly departs, her cheerless uncle Renald takes his place just as three interns--one more than expected--arrive, along with a representative from the mayor's office, searching for a foreign object of magical importance. If hazy worldbuilding undercuts the mystery as Lydia stumbles into tensions around technology reliance and surveillance, emotional drive confers depth in this clue-riddled novel. Characters default to white. Ages 8-12. Agent: Tracy Marchini, BookEnds Literary. (Sept.)

Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

Kirkus

An absorbing, complex debut.

Review quotes

"Lydia's suspenseful first-person narration effectively conveys her distrust, confusion, and amazement as well as her determination to find answers while creating a rich subtext focusing on the old world of books and paper and raising timely questions about the technology replacing them.... An absorbing, complex debut." — Kirkus Reviews

"[E]motional drive confers depth in this clue-riddled novel." — Publishers Weekly
Kate S Simpson
Kate S. Simpson is a librarian at a small public library. A fan of books, hot chocolate, and rainy days, she loves visiting museums of all kinds. She lives with her husband and two children in New England, along with two cats and five typewriters. The Paper Museum is her debut novel.
Classification
Fiction
ISBN-13
9781454949855
Lexile Measure
860
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Union Square Kids
Publication date
August 01, 2023
Series
-
BISAC categories
JUV053000 - Juvenile Fiction | Science Fiction
JUV037000 - Juvenile Fiction | Fantasy & Magic
JUV059000 - Juvenile Fiction | Dystopian
Library of Congress categories
Friendship
Fantasy
Missing persons
Fantasy fiction
Museums
JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic
Novels
JUVENILE FICTION / Science Fiction / General

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