The Whites of Their Eyes by Andrew Clements is a school-under-threat thriller for 8 year olds that opens with a boy breaking into his own school at midnight.<\/p>\n
Ben Pratt is dressed head to toe in black. His mum thinks he is asleep. He is standing at a side door of the Captain Duncan Oakes School with a ring of keys, trying them one after another and hoping the woman walking her poodle along the seawall does not look over.<\/p>\n
In under three weeks a wrecking ball is coming. An entertainment company wants the school’s seafront land for a theme park, and the town Ben has grown up in will not be the same afterwards.<\/p>\n
What Ben has is a gold coin from 1783 with an order stamped on it from the man who founded the school. First and always, my school belongs to the children. Defend it.<\/p>\n
And a list of clues. Somewhere in the building are objects the founder hid, called safeguards, and they have to be found in order. Ben and his friend Jill have solved one already.<\/p>\n
The problem is Mr Lyman. He is wearing a janitor’s uniform and he is actually working for the company that wants the school flattened. He follows them. He turns up where he should not be. Ben describes him as being like a bad smell that gets stuck in your nose for weeks, which is exactly right.<\/p>\n
The pleasure of this one is the puzzling. Seventeen treads up a staircase. A phrase that might mean two different things. Ben works it out on the page and your reader gets to be half a step ahead of him.<\/p>\n
It is the third book of this series and it does not stop to explain much. Ben is already sworn in, the coin is already decoded, the war with Lyman is already personal. A reader dropped in here will follow the plot but will miss most of the weight.<\/p>\n
Two things a parent might want to know. Ben sneaks out at night and lets himself into a locked building, and the book is entirely on his side about it. He also worries the whole way through about his mum and dad, who are living apart now, and that thread is quiet but constant.<\/p>\n
If they want to know how the whole thing started, We the Children is the book where Ben first hears there is a plan to save the school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Whites of Their Eyes by Andrew Clements is a school-under-threat thriller for 8 year olds that opens with a boy breaking into his own school at midnight. Ben Pratt is dressed head to toe in black. His mum thinks he is asleep. He is standing at a side door of the Captain Duncan Oakes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11234,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9691,"lr_next_read_anchor":"We the Children","lr_seo_hook":"A midnight break-in, a 1783 coin and three weeks until the wrecking ball."},"book_tag":[22],"age_group":[26],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[96],"class_list":["post-9516","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-mystery-books","age_group-books-for-8-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-andrew-clements"],"yoast_title":"The Whites of Their Eyes by Andrew Clements | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A midnight break-in, a 1783 coin and three weeks until the wrecking ball. For ages 8+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n