From Goodreads:"Elise and Franklin have always been best friends. Elise has always lived in the big house with her loving Uncle and Aunt, because Elise's parents died when she was too young to remember them. There's always been a barn behind the house with eight locked doors on the second floor.
When Elise and Franklin start middle school, things feel all wrong. Bullying. Not fitting in. Franklin suddenly seems babyish. Then, soon after her 12th birthday, Elise receives a mysterious key left for her by her father. A key that unlocks one of the eight doors upstairs in the barn... "
Awards and Nominations:
- Charlie May Simon Award (2013-2014)
When I purchased this book a few months ago I had VERY high expectations. The main character, Elise, lives with her Aunt and Uncle because her parents are dead. Elise has faint memories with her father, but knows that her mother died shortly after she was born. Elise grows up with her Aunt and Uncle and is best friends with Franklin. Franklin and Elise eventually go to middle school. Franklin seems to have no problems or cares that people think he is weird. It really bothers Elise that people think they are weird, plus she is getting bullied by her locker buddy and she is struggling to keep up with the classwork and homework. One day Elise sees a key in her Uncles shop/barn and she realizes that it has her name on it. Elise gets into some trouble here and there and eventually takes the key from the hook and tries to unlock one of the eight doors that are located upstairs in the barn. She finds that it is full of pictures of her mother and there is a note. This continues and she receives seven more keys after finding the first. Elise's aunt and uncle knew that she would one day discover the key and would investigate. This ends up being her father's final gift to Elise before he died. The story continues and we learn about each of the rooms and then book finally ends.
Okay... Now to talk about how I really felt about this book. I really expected this book to be really good due to the description. That was not the case. It is so rehearsed that Elise would find the key and that she would be a typical kid and try to unlock a door. I really figured that her Dad would set up some really cool rooms so that she would feel that her parents were always with her throughout her life and different points. This wasn't the case. The rooms were filled with "life insight" as I'm going to call it. Things like choosing to live and love, and blah blah blah. It was so cliche. I'm not sure what I was expecting to be in each of the rooms, but I sure didn't like what was in the rooms. It was great and all that her Dad took the time to plan it all out and decide who would get the keys and so forth. Also on the distribution of the keys I thought it was kind of dumb that the people who had them were supposed to give the key to Elise when they felt she was ready. Within a week they had given her all the keys! I find it interesting that they ALL felt she was ready for the rooms. Why not give it a little suspense!? I wanted Elise to have to search for some of the there to be searches happening for Elise to find the keys instead of them just lying around in her bedroom and in the barn rooms. There needed to be more central focus on the keys... I mean the book IS titled Eight Keys. There was a lot of opportunity for adventure to be dispersed in the book, and it just didn't happen.
Another big issue I had in this book was the bullying. I know that it is a realistic thing that happens, and a lot of times it isn't reported to an adult. But what really grinded my gears was the fact that Elise told a teacher about what was happening and the teacher didn't investigate it or do anything. The author is really giving teachers a bad rep by making it seem like we really don't care if kids get bullied or not. This isn't true. I care about each of my students and take action when they tell me something is happening. I was also really expecting Elise and Amanda (the bully) to become friends through some magical thing they had in common. That didn't happen and it kind of made me sad because I wanted to see them get along on civil terms.
The book was okay. It's not a book I would recommend off the top of my head. You would have to have some pretty specific book requirements for me to suggest this book. This book is geared towards middle school kids and I think that elementary kids would find it too old for them and high school would find it too juvenile. I give the book 2 out of 5 stars.
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