You can see Tillie (Matilda) with her camera. Tillie is an observer and through this she has become almost invisible to her classmates until they need things found. The kids have labelled Tillie "Lost and Found". She can find lost objects and her camera sometimes helps when she reviews the images she has captured through the day. Lost objects, are easy to find, and safe but what about a lost person? At times this story feels like a detective or mystery television program. Tillie and Jake gather clues, visit places linked with Jake's dad, and Tillie takes heaps of photos but then she takes one of Jake's dad in a compromising situation and this whole lost and found adventure becomes very serious. Tillie is about to lose her first and only friend since her serious accident but it seems impossible to tell Jake what she has seen.
The kids in this book uncover some adult behavior - the kind of behavior I don't think I have ever read about before in a middle grade book.
I have a suggestion of how to book talk Worth a Thousand Words with your readers aged 10+. Read the blurb. Talk about how Tillie loves her cameras, she has four different types, and talk about how they have helped her cope with her now complex relationship with her father who feels enormous guilt over the accident that left her with a painful disability. Now read chapter 18 - it will break your heart to read the scene where Tillie smashes all of her precious cameras. This scene should leave your library group with a heap of unanswered questions and make them keen to dive into this book.
You can hear an audio extract from Chapter One here.
Publisher blurb: Ever since a car accident left Tillie Green with lasting painful injuries, she's hidden behind her camera. She watches her family and classmates through the lens, tracking down misplaced items and spotting the small details that tell a much bigger story than people usually see. But she isn’t prepared for class clown Jake Hausmann’s request: to find his father. In a matter of days, Tillie goes from silent observer to one half of a detective duo, searching for clues to the mystery of Jake’s dad’s disappearance. When the truth isn’t what Jake wants it to be, and the photographs start exposing people’s secrets, Tillie has to decide what—and who—is truly important to her.
Worth a Thousand Words was published in 2018. I am not sure how I came to have my copy but it probably came from a recent charity bookfair. Worth a Thousand Words was a debut novel for Brigit Young. You can read Chapters One and Two here. I think the ebook might still be available.
Companion books (I read both of these decades ago):
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