Toby Martin: Park Patrol

Toby Martin Series, Vol. 4

by Barbara Grengs

It’s spring at Merriam Park Junior High when kids’ thoughts turn to summer vacation, romance and ...fires in the school’s rest rooms, racist graffiti on the walls, and fights off the school grounds. All add up to a canceled end of the year field trip to Como Park, Toby’s most favorite place ever.

But Toby and her pals discover that the mean-spirited vandalism goes much deeper and is much more pervasive than they thought. When an African-American jogger is attacked while running around Lake Como, Toby and her pals know this is much more serious than a canceled field trip.

ISBN 978-61386-022-9 Mystery, Detective, Young Adult

Sample:

A Sticky, Icky Situation

Thirty-five days and counting until I can stay up late, sleep in, walk the dogs around Lake Como, have picnics with Freddy, write whenever I want to...no homework, no Mrs. Trattles trashing my writing. I was in LaLa Land when suddenly...

“Enh...enh...enh...enh...” The irritating alarm blasted through my daydream and Mr. Ingersoll’s monotone lecture on the theme of Ray Bradbury’s short story “All Summer in a Day,” a really great short story that Ingersoll managed to wreck.

Spring quarter, just when things should be fun and exciting, Mrs. Trattles, my English teacher, had to get a student teacher, and he was not even cute. In fact, he bordered on downright dorky. Wearing a button-down white shirt, a sweater vest, and khaki pants, Mr. Ingersoll reminded me of a grown-up, Bobby Olson, the terrorist wannabe bomber boy who got expelled from school last December for making bomb threats. The difference being Bobby was a lot more fun. Mr. Ingersoll was as much fun as cramps.

Wanting to make his own space, Mr. Ingersoll had taken down Mrs. Trattles’s dorky posters and put up his own, mostly of old movies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Rocky. The bulletin board, which normally showcased our projects, was empty except for faded blue paper speckled with staples. It seemed that even the teachers were counting down the days.

“Finally we can blow this joint,” I said to my best friend Freddy, waking him up.