The Grave Robber's Secret

by Anna Myers

Overview

In Philadelphia in the early 19th centry, Robby Hare's father forces him to help with an unthinkable task-robbing newly filled graves of their contents to sell to the medical college. Despite his interest in the doctor's research, Robby swears never to rob another grave, even if his mother relies on the money they bring in. When William Burke and his daughter, Martha, come to live at their boarding house, Robby's father becomes caught in a broader web of evil. Could his father and Burke be murdering people to provide bodies for medical science? Determined to expose their scheme, Robby must be brave enough to enter the graveyard one more time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802722607
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	02/15/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
Lexile:	650L (what's this?)
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	10 Years

About the Author

Anna Myers is the author of almost twenty books, including, most recently, Time of the Witches and Spy. Tulsa Burning was a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, and Assassin was an Oklahoma Book Award winner. Anna lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
www.annamyers.info.
Anna Myers is the author of more than one dozen books, including Tulsa Burning, a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, Flying Blind, an Oklahoma Book Award finalist, and Assassin, an Oklahoma Book Award winner. Anna lives in Oklahoma.  annamyers.info

Editorial Reviews

Gr 5–9—It is the 1800s in Philadelphia, the home of the nation's first hospital. Doctors use bodies robbed from graves to conduct medical research. Robby Hare's father forces him to help dig up the corpses and then sell them to the medical college to help make ends meet. Despite his reluctance, the boy is intrigued by the discoveries that doctors may make from the cadavers. He sees firsthand what they are doing behind the scenes when he is offered a job to help clean at the school. Still, Robby wishes his Da would stop grave robbing. When mysterious William Burke and his daughter come to live in the Hares' boardinghouse, Robby is able to avoid the graveyard by this distraction, but suspects that Burke is involving his father in some possible murders. He must expose their plans before more lives are taken. Myers based this book on the true story of Burke and Hare, who actually murdered people in the 1820s and sold their bodies in Edinburgh, Scotland. She switched the city and took some liberties with the plot; nevertheless, this is a well-written and fascinating look back in time.—Shannon Seglin, Patrick Henry Library, Vienna, VA

School Library Journal

After being forced by his angry, alcoholic, Irish-immigrant father to dig up newly buried bodies and sell them to a nearby Philadelphia medical school, 12-year-old Robby Hare's luck turns from bad to worse when his family rents its last vacant rooms to devious William Burke and his typhoid-survivor daughter, Martha. Even as Robby and Martha traipse around their neighborhood, helping mentally challenged Daft Jane and other needy folks, the two cloying do-gooders also try to figure out where their cunning fathers continually disappear together and why late-night visitors are mysteriously absent the next morning. Although she bases Hare and Burke on infamous, real-life murderers from 19th-century Edinburgh, Scotland, prolific historical-fiction author Myers misses the mark this time with a creeping pace, stilted dialogue and an anticlimactic ending. Even Robby's gruesome job at the medical school (where he's asked to dump body parts in a well and allowed to observe early modern medicine), his observations on women's inequality and his budding independence are not enough to hold readers' attention. (author's note) (Historical fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews