78 pages • 2 hours read
Jennifer Chambliss BertmanBook Scavenger
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Stability Versus Adventure
Emily is being raised in an unusual way because her parents are adventurers at heart. Their greatest delight comes from exploring new places, so the idea of living in a different state every year is appealing to them. Even Matthew seems to find this lifestyle interesting, but this relentless quest for excitement doesn’t move Emily in the same way. She craves stability and continuity, both of which are entirely lacking in her young life. Aside from the stress of adapting to a new environment annually, Emily has never remained at one school long enough to form a lasting friendship with anyone. As a result, Emily’s social life exists entirely within the context of Book Scavenger, as she seeks to create a source of continuity for herself. The Crane family seems oblivious to the psychological toll their nomadic lifestyle is taking on their youngest member.
James’s family offers a striking contrast since they have an abundance of the stability that Emily wants. She recognizes the difference the first time she sets foot in the Lee apartment:
Emily tried to imagine that—year after year in one house, one neighborhood, one school, with memories that went back for generations. She couldn’t wrap her head around that. All she came up with was a crazy patchwork mishmash of all the different places she’d lived (43-44).
Part of the reason why Emily becomes attached to James is that his secure family life offers her a chance to vicariously experience what it might feel like to have roots. At the start of the novel, Emily’s only sense of continuity comes from Book Scavenger since the website follows her from place to place, and the same gamers participate across the country. Ironically, Emily’s participation in Book Scavenger shows that she possesses a spark of her family’s thirst for adventure too. Hiding and finding books in each place she lives allows for a continuous treasure hunt. Therefore, Book Scavenger fulfills both Emily’s limited need for adventure and her much deeper need for continuity. The critical role that the game plays in her emotional balance explains her passionate motivation to complete what might be Griswold’s last game. By the end of the novel, Emily attains the promise of even greater continuity as her parents decide to remain in San Francisco until the entire family is ready to move. The final lines of the novel, when Emily declares that she is “ready to lean into their next adventure” (344), show that stability does not have to limit adventure, but can provide a helpful foundation for it instead.
How to Be a Good Friend
Because of Emily’s unusual upbringing, she has no social network of peers to support her through life’s ups and downs. While Matthew has found a way to maintain the friendships he’s made in his travels by staying in touch via phone and the internet, Emily’s only resource is Book Scavenger and the other gamers are her competitors, not her friends. As a result, Emily is unprepared to navigate challenges in her friendship with James. He needs her support in his competition with Maddie, but Emily is obsessed with the Poe puzzle instead. She fails him at a critical moment, and that mistake costs her his friendship and trust. Because James has a stable home life and a circle of friends at school, he has already internalized the emotional awareness and compassion necessary to successful friendships. Emily’s involvement with Book Scavenger has shaped a tendency to view others suspiciously, as potential competitors. She also lacks empathy for James’s plight since he might have to shave off his lock of hair if he loses. She is unable to recognize how James fears the loss of something important to him, just as she fears losing Book Scavenger. Bertman positions empathy and mutual emotional support as the bedrock of every successful friendship, but Emily still needs to learn the rules of this game.
Emily seems aware of her limitations when she talks to Hollister about her fight with James:
Emily concentrated on lining the magnets into a row rather than see how Hollister reacted to her confession. ‘That’s bound to happen. Even with the best of friends.’ ‘I don’t think’ […] Emily took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know how to be a good friend’ (262).
Hollister dismisses Emily’s fears as groundless. However, it isn’t until he has this conversation with Emily that the shop owner experiences his own epiphany regarding his friendship with Griswold. He failed to empathize with Griswold’s enthusiasm for sharing his dream with the world, just as Emily failed to empathize with James’s need to win the cipher challenge. Both the pre-teen and the elderly man are learning the same lesson about how to be a supportive friend. By the end of the novel, Emily and James are able to reconcile after Emily apologizes for failing to support James, and it is implied that Hollister and Griswold may reconcile as well.
Winning at All Costs
The novel is filled with a variety of competitions. Emily is the most obvious example of a competitive spirit in her initial attempts to score more points on the Book Scavenger website and later her quest to solve the Poe game. At the beginning of the novel, Emily is bested almost immediately by fellow player Babbage who leaves a taunting message in the spot where Emily expected to find a book. Emily interprets Babbage’s behavior as mean-spirited since he obviously doesn’t need to collect points; he has already reached the game’s highest level. When Babbage is later revealed to be Quisling, an adult and a schoolteacher with a love of ciphers, his motivations are characterized as both an obsession with puzzles and an all-consuming drive to win. Quisling is also shown to be a mean-spirited teacher, aligning his obsession with winning with a lack of compassion for others.
James also engages in fiercely competitive behavior with Maddie Fernandez. He is determined to win the cipher challenge to protect his favorite lock of hair. Maddie seems motivated by the desire to win at all costs, even if she has to cheat to do so. James articulates this theory to Emily when he says of Maddie cheating off of him, ‘‘She didn’t want to win a homework pass. She wanted to make sure I didn’t, and she wanted to rub it in at the same time” (204). Like Quisling, Maddie’s obsession with beating James is aligned with her willingness to behave meanly.
While Maddie is a particularly unsavory example of the desire to win at all costs, the worst personification of this principle is Remora. Rather than being gratified by the thought of unearthing a valuable, unknown Poe manuscript, he is determined to claim all the glory for the find. Even though the item belongs to Griswold and Remora was paid and signed a release to all claims related to it, his pride won’t allow him to step aside. Remora’s desire to win at all costs impels him to attempt murdering the kids and Griswold if they deny him his victory. Emily is shown to be able to recognize the dangers of an obsession with victory, as she realizes her fixation on the Poe puzzle has hindered her relationship with James. Emily learns that some costs of winning may be too high, and successfully repairs her relationships before completing the puzzle.
