The Classy Crooks Club
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Twelve-year-old AJ is dreading spending the summer with her uber-strict grandmother—that is, until she’s recruited to join Grandma Jo’s heist club—in this hilarious and quirky twist on a summer vacation story.
AJ does not, under any circumstances, want to spend an entire month living with her strict Grandma Jo. Not only does her grandmother tell her how to walk, what to eat, and which rooms she can enter, she fills all of AJ’s free time with boring sewing lessons! Grandma Jo wants nothing more than to transform her adventurous, fun-loving granddaughter into a prim and proper lady…and AJ hates it.
But AJ’s dull summer takes an exciting turn when she discovers that her grandmother’s “bridge group” is actually a club of crooks! And when Grandma Jo offers to teach AJ lock picking instead of embroidery in exchange for help with a few capers, AJ is thrilled to join her grandmother’s madcap band of thieves who claim to steal only for ethical reasons.
But even the most respectable ladies can hide some truly surprising secrets, and AJ must decide for herself what it truly means to be one of the good guys.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With her parents away, athletic, edgy Annemarie (or AJ, as she prefers) is doomed to a month of etiquette lessons and tea time with her rich and seemingly uncaring Grandma Jo, a woman who's "not big on joy" and dismisses 12-year-old AJ's passion for soccer as unladylike. AJ's torture compounds each day until she discovers that her grandmother's bridge club is actually a small-time heist club and its members need her help. While this gives AJ the chance to earn respect from her grandmother, the more AJ gets involved with the ladies' questionable pastime, the more their demands grow, as do her concerns about their activities. The story gets a bit muddled as Cherry (Red) toggles between AJ's amateur thievery and her increasingly complicated adolescent social world, with the former storyline taking an occasional backseat to the less entertaining friendship struggles. A shocking and somewhat disturbing final twist helps the characters learn some surprising lessons about themselves, allowing AJ, and readers, to reconsider what the true "definition of a respectable lady" might be. Ages 8 12.
