Summary from GoodReads:

Welcome to the tyrannical city of Jewel, where impatience is a sin and boldness is a crime.

Goldie Roth has lived in Jewel all her life. Like every child in the city, she wears a silver guardchain and is forced to obey the dreaded Blessed Guardians. She has never done anything by herself and won’t be allowed out on the streets unchained until Separation Day.

When Separation Day is canceled, Goldie, who has always been both impatient and bold, runs away, risking not only her own life but also the lives of those she has left behind. In the chaos that follows, she is lured to the mysterious Museum of Dunt, where she meets the boy Toadspit and discovers terrible secrets. Only the cunning mind of a thief can understand the museum’s strange, shifting rooms. Fortunately, Goldie has a talent for thieving.

Which is just as well, because the leader of the Blessed Guardians has his own plans for the museum—plans that threaten the lives of everyone Goldie loves. And it will take a daring thief to stop him. . . .

My Review:

Hurray for fantastic, middle-grade level adventures!  I think the last book I read that I enjoyed this much was Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins.  Lian Tanner has created a fantastic world in Museum of Thieves and provided middle-schoolers with a strong, female lead character (and a strong, male secondary character), no romance (none needed!), a mysterious building and a world that could be so real it’s frightening!

Have you ever seen parents walking about with their children tied to them?  Take that and magnify it 100 times and you have the basic idea behind this book.  In Jewel, children are strapped to their parents until the age of separation.   But Goldie, a 12 year old girl, decides this is not the life she wants to lead… and so she takes measures to change it.

Enter an interesting crew of thieves (although.. I would have liked a bit more fleshing out of them).  A building that, rather than using the Harry Potter-style of staircases, actually lives and moves about according to its moods.  Caught your interest yet?

Let me just say.. when this book came in I set it on the counter in the kitchen.  The moment my 7 year old nephew (who is becoming quite the prolific reader) saw it he wanted to know what it is about.  Then, his father stopped as he passed it and checked it out.  I took it with me to babysit, and one of the adults of the house picked it up off the table when it was lying out.  This is a book that inspires interest and, especially if you have a pre-teen reluctant reader, will beg to be read.

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The Little Bookworm: Guest Review