In this thoughtful adventure-mystery, 12-year-old Cassie learns a thing or two about herself after she is forced to spend the summer with her father in a trailer in the Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Cassie misses her friends back home and mistrusts the other kids in the junior naturalist program her father enrolls her in, especially tough-looking, tattooed X. For his part, X thinks Cassie is spoiled and stuck up. When the kids are told that artifacts have disappeared from a nearby archaeological dig, Cassie suspects X, though the truth may be muddier. After divorcing her mother, her father left a good job for odd jobs in the canyon, and his suspicious behavior is starting to make Cassie wonder if he is involved in the thefts. As she tries to discover the culprit, Cassie learns the true meaning of friendship and realizes she is more capable than she thinks. The pace of the narrative may be leisurely, but the truths that Cassie realizes will resonate with young readers.

Gr 4-6 Twelve-year-old Cassandra did not expect to spend her summer living in Palo Duro Canyon participating in a nature volunteer program, but that's the reality she faces when her mother's work in Europe requires her to spend the summer with her father, who does carpentry for the park. Cassandra meets two Mexican American boys, Xavier and Hector, and immediately assumes that Xavier must have gang affiliations because he has tattoos, wears "intimidating" clothes, and has a "hard, menacing" face. Using the journal her mother provided, Cassandra scribbles clues and conclusions as to how Xavier and her father are involved in the theft of precious artifacts from the park. Cassandra and Hector establish a friendlier relationship, although Hector's request for Cassandra to help him with English (if he helps with her Spanish) doesn't ring true, because his English is hardly broken. Descriptions of the desolation surrounding Cassandra are apt and don't overwhelm the narrative. Facts about the canyon's flora and fauna are incorporated through dialogue without being awkward or obvious. Unfortunately, characters are one-dimensional and superficial and the mystery surrounding the missing artifacts is weak. Cassandra's enlightenment about Xavier is sudden to the point of being unrealistic, and the mystery of the relationship between Cassandra's father and the boys is rather flat. Instead of this tame and somewhat problematic work, try Elise Broach's "Superstition Mountain" series (Holt) or Gloria Skurzynski's "National Parks Mystery" series (National Geographic) for lovers of nature-themed mysteries. VERDICT With no shortage of kid detective stories, this one is a pass. Jennifer Schultz, Fauquier County Public Library, Warrenton, VA