The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels

Parents need to know that The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels is first-time novelist Beth Lincoln's quirky, vocabulary-intensive, comically gothic tale of tweens coping with a family gathering, with lively illustrations by Claire Powell. Traditionally, the Swift clan returns to The House to seek the treasure allegedly left by murderous Great-Uncle Vile before he killed most of his family and vanished many years ago. But, as you would expect of a family where newborn infants are given a word picked from a dictionary as their name, leading to a lot of characters called things like Atrocious, Pique, Gumshoe and Pamplemousse, things go off the rails pretty quickly -- and with lots of big words, phrases in several languages, and discussion of whether your name defines you. Two characters meet violent (and ridiculous) deaths, and there's lots of peril between the booby-trapped mansion, the numerous weapons, and the family members who are just plain up to no good. One adult character explains how when she was born everyone thought she was a boy and she had to work to make them understand. A tween character declines to be identified as a boy or a girl. Sisters Felicity (fashionable and fluent in French), Phenomena (a brilliant scientist who's lost her sense of smell in an experiment), and Shenanigan (usually up to something), squabble and bicker amid all this, but their seafaring uncle reminds them that they're a crew and should act like it. And all their talents come in handy in finding a murderer.