{Synopsis} – What if your pencil had all the answers? Would you ace every test? Would you know what your teachers were thinking? When Ava Anderson finds a scratched up pencil she doodles like she would with any other pencil. But when she writes a question in the margin of her math quiz, she hears a clear answer in a voice no one else seems to hear.
With the help of her friend Sophie, Ava figures out that the pencil will answer factual questions only – those with definite right or wrong answers – but won’t predict the future. Ava and Sophie discover all kinds of uses for the pencil, and Ava's confidence grows with each answer. But it's getting shorter with every sharpening, and when the pencil reveals a scary truth about Ava's family, she realizes that sometimes the bravest people are the ones who live without all the answers…
{My thoughts} – Ava is a twelve year-old worry wort. She lets everything get the best of her and you learn to love that about her throughout this book and the way that it’s been written. She lives with her mom, dad, grandma, brother Marcus and sister Emma. She also has a best friend named Sophie.
One day when Ava is running late for school and needs a pencil, she grabs one out of the junk drawer and heads to school. When she starts her math test that day she discovers that the someone is telling her the answers to the questions that she isn’t sure about.
Eventually she learns that it was the pencil that was telling her this stuff and then she shares her secret with Sophie. Sophie and her both decide to use the pencil to find out all sorts of things, but there is a limit to the knowledge that they can obtain from the pencil. Also, it ends up causing a lot of issues for Ava, the worry wort.
As the book progresses, Ava goes through a lot of difficult times. She has to do an obstacle course on a school field trip that terrifies her, but not as much as the news she is waiting to hear about concerning her mother and grandpa. As the book comes to a close she has to figure out if the pencil is worth all the trouble that it causes or if she should let it go.
I don’t know how I would respond if I were in Ava’s shoes. I know that a lot she had to go through in the book was hard and difficult, but I also know that knowing everything isn’t helpful either. When she learns all the remaining secrets of the pencil everything changes for her, for the better I would like to think, but that isn’t the best part, the best part is…. Well you have to read the book to figure that out. I have parts in the book that I think are better then others, and more so parts that are really emotional and made me want to cry, and then some made me laugh while others just made me think. What would I do if I were in Ava’s shoes?
I would like to think that children reading this book, would be able to think with an open mind. It isn’t always easy to deal with a lot of bad, but it is also a part of life. Where there is bad things, some good will rise above it, one can only hope the good will surface before that bad can cause more heartache and worry.
This book is ideal for any child that loves to ask what if questions, can’t handle dealing with a lot of stress, constantly worries about everything and has problems accepting every day things that occur around them.
Final Conclusion: 5 Star Rating.
