KALEIDOSCOPE EYES

When 13-year-old Lyza cleans her grandfather’s attic and finds a bundle of papers marked “For Lyza Only,” she’s propelled into a modern-day search for pirates’ treasure. After weeks of digging—and suffering bruised wrists, blistered fingers and fatigue—Lyza and her two best friends make an amazing discovery and become local celebrities. Set in 1968, with the Vietnam War, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix in the background, Bryant’s novel-in-verse effectively weaves Lyza’s narrative together with letters from Vietnam, Captain Kidd’s pirate’s log and an occasional poem that stands beautifully on its own. Lyza’s kaleidoscope, a birthday present from her mother, who has walked out on the family, connects readers with the Beatles’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” provides the volume’s title and offers a perfect metaphor for a girl learning to see her world in new ways. Readers will fall under the spell of the delicious plot and race ahead to see if Lyza and her friends find buried treasure. The solid bibliography offers good resources for researching pirates, Vietnam and the ’60s. A neat match with Gary Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars (2007) and Michael Kaufman’s 1968 (2008). (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 9-14)