The Lifters

Gran did not want to move to Carousel.

But his parents had little choice.

His father, a mechanic, had not had steady work in many years, for reasons unknown to Gran.

His mother had had an accident when Gran was young, and was now in a wheelchair. His parents never explained quite what happened, and Gran didn t feel right asking. After a while, when people asked Gran about his mother s condition, he just said, She was born that way. It was the easiest way out of the conversation.

But he remembered when she walked. He remembered that she had once worked as an artist in museums, making the animals in ­dioramas look realistic. He had a foggy memory of standing, as a toddler, in an African savannah with her as she touched up the whiskers of a cheetah. That was before the wheelchair.

Then Gran s sister Maisie was born, and his mother hadn t returned to work. Gran s father had built a studio for her, enclosing their deck and filling it with easels and paint and worktables, everything the right height. But Gran couldn t remember her ever using it.

My art is them now, Gran heard her say to his father one day. At the time, Gran didn t know what that meant.

Something of her talents had rubbed off on Gran. When he was four, his mother began giving him a certain kind of clay, available in hundreds of colors, that hardened when baked in the oven. With this clay, and with his mother s gentle guidance, he formed penguins and dolphins and narwhals ­sea creatures who shared the Atlantic with him.

There was a distinct satisfaction in taking a block of blue clay and warming it, rolling it into a ball, then pinching it here to make a fin, squeezing there to make a tail ­and suddenly, from a blue ball there was something like a whale. Gran made animals from clay when he was happy, when he was sad, and especially when his parents fought. He was never sure what would happen when his parents argued, how loud it would get or how long it would go on, but he

Dave Eggers grew up near Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the founder of McSweeney s, an independent publishing house in San Francisco that produces books, a quarterly journal of new writing (McSweeney s Quarterly Concern), and a monthly magazine, The Believer. McSweeney s publishes Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. In 2002, he co-founded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit youth writing and tutoring center in San Francisco s Mission District. Sister centers have since opened in seven other American cities under the umbrella of 826 National, and like-minded centers have opened in Dublin, London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Birmingham, Alabama, among other locations. Eggers's work has been nominated for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, France s Prix Médicis, Germany s Albatross Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the American Book Award. Eggers lives in Northern California with his family. His novels include The Circle, A Hologram for the King, and Heroes of the Frontier.

This book is a ripper, full of all the good stuff: adventure, mystery, and lots of great jokes.  
Mac Barnett, Caldecott Honor winning author of Extra Yarn

"Full of surprises, magic, and heart." --Rebecca Stead, Newbery Award-winning author of When You Reach Me

"A heart-gladdening work of allegorical genius . . . brilliantly rendering the bewildering stupidity of the adult world as seen by children." The Guardian

"Eggers performs a marvelous sleight of hand, producing a first-rate middle grade adventure that doubles as a political parable for our times."  The Buffalo News

[A] cozy contemporary novel about lifting spirits and rebuilding community through teamwork and imagination. Publishers Weekly

"A warm and rewarding read . . .Eggers skillfully handles the trope of the kids who save the town, with plenty of humorous adult cluelessness but an equal measure of compassion." The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"Original . . . and always intriguing. . . . Eggers's story moves along briskly thanks to mounting suspense and bite-size chapters." Booklist

"A whimsical, fantastical story with elements of realism. . . . This atmospheric story's detailed plot moves quickly, and all the characters experience growth." School Library Journal