The Strangers by Margaret Peterson Haddix

The strange house is utterly barren, and when they step outside, the world is different too: the sky is gray, and the yard is overgrown with weeds and surrounded by a tall, dilapidated fence. When they pull it, the room spins, and when it stops, they step out into a dark, deserted basement. On the other side, they discover what Natalie calls a “panic room,” stocked with emergency food, water, and boxes of cash. Chess, Emma, Finn, and Natalie-who is now a committed member of the rescue operation-enter their mother’s office and find the secret door behind a bookcase. Emma also begins to decode the letter, which tells of an “alternate universe,” the Greystone’s real place of birth, and the place to which their mother disappeared in an effort to rescue the kidnapped Gustano kids. When aligned correctly, the dots are a map of their mother’s basement office with a star marking a secret door. They are shocked to find she looks exactly like their own mother.Īfter several late nights of working in secret, Finn stumbles upon a clue in the seemingly random dot patterns in his mother’s business logo. Meanwhile, Natalie finds news footage of the Gustanos’ mother pleading for the safe return of her children.

When they find it, it’s written in code, a perfect challenge for Emma who loves math, numbers, and secret codes. Kate’s text message referred to a “letter” that would explain everything, so they search for that first. Morales’s office that night and search for clues on Kate’s phone and laptop.

Morales’s 13-year-old daughter, Natalie, sneak into Ms.

Desperate to solve the mystery, the kids, with the help of Ms. Morales, saying that she may never return. Things get even more strange when the children discover a text from their mother, intended for Ms. Also, one of Finn’s classmates says he saw Finn’s mother running out of a bank holding a bag, even suggesting that she robbed it. Morales’s extreme caution when picking them up from school. The kids are anxious when their mother doesn’t call the next day. Morales-a woman they barely know-will be watching them until she gets back. The next day, she announces that she has to go out of town on a business trip, and Ms. That night, Chess overhears his mother, uncharacteristically angry, on a phone call with a man named Joe, telling him, “You have to fix this. In a bizarre coincidence, the three kids have the same names and birthdays as the Greystones. One day, when they come home from school, the kids find their mother visibly upset, reading a news story about three kidnapped kids in Arizona, the Gustanos. The Strangers tells the story of Chess, Emma, and Finn Greystone who live in Ohio with their mother, Kate.

The Strangers by Margaret Peterson Haddix