Book Review: Montgomery and the Case of the Golden Key by Tracy Occomy Crowder
Publisher’s description
Junior Library Guild Selection
New Visions Award Winner, Tu Books
It’s 2008, and ten-year-old Montgomery “Monty” Carver is out to find the origin of a golden key found in his Southside Chicago community—which may or may not host the next Olympic games, or supply the next President of the United States, or… have a potential ghost hanging around.
In 2008 Chicago, in the Southside community of Washington Park, Montgomery”Monty” Carver had hoped for the best summer ever! Unfortunately, things aren’t going as planned. Monty is struggling to prove to his parents that he’s old enough to be without adult supervision—especially after a very embarrassing incident with a metal detector. Man!
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So when Monty finds a golden key in Old Lady Jenkins’s sunflowers, he decides he’s going to unravel the key’s mystery all by himself, thank you very much. No parents allowed. Besides, he’s ten years old now, and he’s mastered the perfectly round ‘fro! (It takes a protractor, you see.)
Soon Monty’s hunt to determine the origin of the key leads him to discover the rich history—like famous Black jockeys!—of his Chicago community, which has been speculating its future since one of their residents, Barack Obama, is running for president and the Olympics might come to town in 2016.
On top of all that speculating, there are rumors going around that a ghost is hanging out behind their apartment building, and that Monty’s elementary school may have to close.
So much to solve! Should the Olympics come to Washington Park? What happens if his school closes? Is there really a ghost? And where, oh where, did the key come from anyway? Monty is determined to find out.
Amanda’s thoughts
I’m really going through a phase where I am totally HOOKED if a story has a mystery. Which I guess bodes well for us returning to our winter project, in a few weeks, which was our last winter project: trying to solve Cain’s Jawbone, a murder mystery puzzle book with 100 pages all out of order and 32 million combinations. SIGH.
Thankfully, this story was more straightforward.
Montgomery needs to make some money this summer, to help pay for a birthday gift he opened early and then broke. This tasks set him up to connect with neighbors he hasn’t known well, and everyone has a story for him. As he chitchats with them all, he starts to learn about the history of his neighborhood and community and starts to solve the riddle of a golden key he finds in a garden. Through his new connections, he gets more involved in what’s happening around him. It’s a busy time for his community—they may end up hosting the Olympics in 8 years (and Monty starts to learn that possibility maybe isn’t as cool as he’d thought), neighborhood-adjacent Barack Obama is running for president, and their school may be on the chopping block. All of these things, plus all of the new info Monty learns, throw him into the thick of researching the past and advocating for the present.
Monty is an excellent character. He’s smart, curious, determined, and so open to connecting with people he until now hasn’t known well or at all. I loved watching Monty find all the pieces to solve the mystery of the key and watching him grow as an activist. A really good read.
Review copy (ARC) courtesy of the publisher
ISBN-13: 9781643795171
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Publication date: 10/10/2023
Age Range: 9 – 13 Years
Filed under: Book Reviews
About Amanda MacGregor
Amanda MacGregor works in an elementary library, loves dogs, and can be found on Twitter @CiteSomething.
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