I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the JADIE IN FIVE DIMENSIONS
by Dianne K. Salerni Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the
giveaway!
About the Book:
Authors: Dianne K. Salerni
Pub. Date: October 5, 2021
Publisher: Holiday House
Formats: Hardcover, eBook,
Audiobook
Pages: 288
Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, TBD, Bookshop.org
A thirteen-year-old girl seeks answers about her past in the fourth dimension--and beyond--in this think-outside-the-box adventure.
What do you do when it turns out your whole life has been a lie?
Jadie Martin was always told she was abandoned by her parents. Creatures from
the 4th dimension rescued her and placed her with a loving adoptive family.
Now, Jadie acts as an agent for the beings, also known as Seers. She uses the
4th dimension as a short-cut to travel anywhere on Earth, performing missions
calculated to guide the world toward a brighter future.
But then Jadie discovers that her origin story is fake. In reality, her birth family
has suffered multiple tragedies and disasters engineered from 4-space,
including the devastating loss of their baby girl. Her!
Doubting the Seers, Jadie starts anonymously observing her long-lost family.
Why are they so important? What are the true intentions of the Seers? And what
will all-powerful four-dimensional beings do to a rebellious human girl when
they realize she's interfering with their plans?
A Wrinkle in Time meets Flatland in this thrilling
journey that challenges the meaning of family, loyalty, and our universe at
large.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
Reviews:
"Salerni offers a page-turning adventure tale and
adeptly breaks down the math and science elements behind multidimensional
theory for middle-grade readers. The book also has heart, touching on the
emotional lives of two adopted 13-year-olds and the true meaning of
family."—Booklist
"A thrilling ride through a multidimensional universe and high-stakes
action"—Kirkus Reviews
"A complex, engaging sci-fi adventure that offers a different perspective
on our world, literally from a dimension beyond."—School Library
Journal
Excerpt:
1. Jadie
My target holds her phone against
her ear, scurrying down the sidewalk in high heels. She’s dragging a wheeled suitcase and
carrying a tapestry bag over her shoulder. The bag has sunflowers on it, which
is how I know I’ve got the right lady.
Coasting behind her on my skateboard, I weave between pedestrians.
One man snarls at me—“Watch it, girl!”— even though I didn’t touch him.
Great. Last thing I need is someone drawing attention to me.
Luckily, the woman is too busy talking on her phone to notice.
She’s heading for a subway entrance a block ahead, so I have to make my move.
A lot of kids on my middle school soccer team talk about getting
into “the zone.” I call it Jadie 2. 0— an alternate me
that pushes the regular Jadie Martin aside and tells my body what to do. Speed up. Bend your knees. Lean left.
Bearing down on the woman, I hook my fingers under the st rap of
her tapestry bag and hurl it as far as I can into traffic.
The bag strikes the windshield of a taxi, spewing its contents
over the car and into the street.
The woman whirls toward me with a furious shriek, her hands curved
into manicured claws. Cutting sharply away on my board, I call over my
shoulder, “Sorry!”
I only did what I was ordered to do.
Other people shout after me, but only the guy who yelled at me a
few seconds ago gives chase. “Come back here, you little punk!”
I steer into the closest alley, which turns out to be a mistake. A
delivery van blocks the exit, and two guys are stacking crates around the
vehicle. There’s no way I can get through them with the angry man ten steps behind
me.
What I do next is against protocol, but I don’t see an
alternative. Hopping off the skateboard, I stamp on the back end and grab the
front axle. As my pursuer barrels toward me, his hand outstretched, I stab the
round button on my metal bracelet and vanish.
Or at least that’s what it looks like to the man in the alley.
For me, it’s like being knocked from my skateboard while traveling
at top speed— a sudden wrench in a new direction.
Not a normal direction like up, down, left, or right. I’m flying kata, out of three-
dimensional space.
Shutting my eyes to keep from getting dizzy, I hold out my arm.
Only when my feet hit a metal platform and my bracelet clicks into a port- lock
do I blink and look around. The alley is gone, replaced by what
looks like a modern art painting sprung to life. In front of me, gold loops
squirm and blue orbs pulse. Off to my right, silver tubes intersect in
impossible ways like an optical illusion— but this isn’t an illusion.
This is 4-space.
I glance down between my feet, through the metal grid of the
platform. Earth isn’t visible to human eyes from this position, but it’s there.
My planet, the solar system, the Milky Way Galaxy . . . the entire three-
dimensional universe, in fact, is nest ed inside the vast ness of this four-
dimensional universe the way one Russian doll fits inside another.
A red glow illuminates the space around me— bright enough to see
by, but not as satisfying as sunlight or even a strong lightbulb. It reminds me
of a fi re burning in the wilderness, which always makes me wonder if these
platforms are inside or outside. Or if inside and outside aren’t
the only two options when you have four spatial dimensions.
The only things that make sense to my eyes are the platform I’m standing
on and the items I brought with me: my skateboard and my bracelet, where
today’s assignment is spelled out on a small screen.
Woman with luggage walking toward subway station. Sunflower
tapestry bag. Throw into traffic.
Underneath these instructions are the spatial coordinates of the
event— a string of numbers that mean nothing to me. They placed me in the
correct location for my mission, but they aren’t necessary to get me home.
At the edge of the platform there’s a clunky console that looks
like something from the 1960s. It has large, numbered keys for entering
coordinates on the way to a course correction, and three buttons labeled
Complete, Incomplete, and Return to be used afterward.
Hugging my skateboard under my arm, I push Complete.
The screen on my bracelet goes blank.
Assignments like this leave me conflicted. On one hand, I’m pumped
with adrenaline, like when I intercept a ball on the soccer field. On the other
hand, what I did was an aggressive act against a player unaware of the game.
It feels like a foul.
I hope things turn out okay for that lady. Maybe she would’ve been
flattened by a bus at the next intersection and the delay I created saved her
life. Or maybe, when she misses her train, she passes the time before the next
one by buying a winning lottery ticket.
But Miss Rose tells us that the desired outcome of our missions
rarely involves the target. The end result of throwing a purse into the street
might be four steps removed from the act. Maybe the taxi that
got hit with the bag misses a fare, and because of that, two people meet who wouldn’t have met if the
taxi had been there. They fall in love, get married, and have a kid who someday
cures cancer.
That would make throwing a stranger’s bag into traffic totally
worthwhile.
After I’ve registered my assignment as complete, I push the Return
button. The platform whirs into action, sliding past four identical but
unoccupied platforms. Traveling through 4-space creates a shortcut between any
two locations in 3-space. Therefore, it’s only seconds before my platform stops,
the port- lock releases my bracelet, and I’m yanked ana, the direction opposite
from kata. The machine returns me to the same location I departed from earlier
today: my bedroom in my house in Kansas, slipping me between the walls and the
roof through the open fourth dimension (which is visible from 4-space even
though humans can’t perceive it). The adult Agents nicknamed this machine the
Transporter because when it deposits me on the fuzzy blue rug in the center of
my room, I appear in the blink of an eye, like in Star
Trek.
Alia Malik looks up without any surprise and says, “Hey, Jadie.”
She’s lying on my bed, scrolling on her phone. “Where you been?”
“A city. Not sure where.” I drop my skateboard and nudge it with
my foot, sending it off to a corner of the room. Alia isn’t surprised that I
appeared out of nowhere, but I’m a little surprised to see her. She’s my
neighbor and a fellow Agent, but she’s not usually waiting in my bedroom when I
get back from missions.
“I went to Thailand,” she says. “Third time this month.”
Alia, her sister, and her parents often get sent to Thailand, the
country of Alia’s grandparents. I wish I would get assignments overseas. “Did
you see anything interesting?”
Alia snorts. “I was in a field. I opened a fence. What’d you do?”
“I threw some lady’s purse into traffic.”
“Jadie!” Alia gasps in partly fake, partly real horror. “You get
all the mean ones.”
She’s not wrong. I hope it’s because I’m athletic and not because
Miss Rose thinks I’m a criminal at heart.
Alia flashes a wide, forced smile. “I have a favor to ask. Any
chance you’d babysit for me tomorrow?” She holds up her arm and rattles a
bracelet identical to mine.
Babysit. She wants me to take her bracelet and cover
her assignments, which is against the rules. Course corrections are designed
specifically for each Agent. We aren’t supposed to swap them.
Alia sees my hesitation and starts begging. “Please, Jadie!
There’s a Cosmic Knight tournament tomorrow. I can’t leave in the middle
without forfeiting.” Alia is obsessed with the online game Cosmic
Knight, a race- slash- battle
among alien players— water- breathing assassins, murderous spider ladies,
poisonous floating gas bags— seeking a mysterious token that will protect the
finder’s homeworld from destruction. I played once, but I prefer soccer.
“If you tell Miss Rose, she won’t give you a mission while it’s
going on,” I point out. Our 4-space liaison doesn’t assign course corrections
during activities where our disappearance would be noticed. When Alia chews her
fingernail and avoids my eyes, I get it. “Ohhh. You’re grounded again.”
She grimaces. “I failed a history test . I’m not supposed to be
out of the house this weekend, except for course corrections, and Mom says no
online activities for two weeks. But she and Dad will be at Tehereh’s color
guard competition tomorrow, soooo . . .”
“I have a soccer game in the morning.”
“I wouldn’t need you until one o’clock.”
I sigh.
“I already asked Huan and Jin.” Those are the fifteen-year- old
Agents across the cul-de-sac. “But they’re visiting colleges this weekend. I
know your brother would do it— Ty probably would, for a price— but I don’t trust them to get the job done. No
offense to Marius.”
“None taken.” My brother, Marius, is always willing to help a
friend but sometimes lacks good judgment. As for my next- door neighbor, Ty
Rivers, I wouldn’t want to give him that kind of blackmail material if I were
Alia.
She presses her hands together. “Help me,
Jadie Martin.
You’re my only hope.”
I recognize the line from Star Wars but
shoot back, “You mean your last hope. ’Cause you already asked Huan and Jin,
crossed off Marius and Ty, and you can’t ask your sister or one of the adults
to do it.”
“C’mon. I probably won’t get an assignment during the couple of
hours you have the bracelet.” She hesitates. “I know you don’t want to get in
trouble with the Seers because of . . . you know . . . but—”
“Because of what?”
Alia shrugs like she doesn’t want to bring it up. “Because you owe
them your life.”
My shoulders hunch automatically, but I try to look like it’s no
big deal.
Twelve years ago, my natural- born parents abandoned me by the
side of a highway in the middle of a snowstorm. Like trash.
I should have died. But superintelligent beings from a higher
dimension sent their best Agents to rescue me and raise me as their own
daughter. I grew up in a loving family with great parents and a brother who’s
an idiot sometimes, but still my brother. For the past six months, since I
turned thirteen, I’ve had the honor of serving as an Agent myself, assisting
the Seers in their mission to put Earth on track for a brighter future. When
they tell me to mug a lady on the street, I do it and do it well.
I see that Alia’s face is falling, and I feel
like trash on the side of the highway, disappointing my friend rather than
break one tiny rule. It’s only a couple of hours, and if Alia is asked to close
a fence in Thailand, I can close that fence as well as she can. In fact, I bet
I can close a fence like it’s never been closed before.
“I’ll do it.”
2. SAM
Sam Lowell hears the apartment
door open and close, but, engrossed in gluing Popsicle sticks together, he doesn’t register
it for several minutes.
The drawing in front of him serves as his guide. The “impossible
cube,” the geometric basis for the M. C. Escher print Belvedere,
is simple to sketch— a cube with
one of the back edges cleverly drawn to look like a front edge.
Of course, it’s not really a cube but a two- dimensional drawing
the human eye imagines as a cube. This object couldn’t
exist in three dimensions, although Sam has read it’s possible to make parts of
it from Popsicle sticks and— by photographing them from the right angle— cause
them to look like an impossible cube.
It’s trick photography, but it might help him with his project.
First, he has to get his fake cube parts assembled correctly.
As he works, a series of thoughts penetrates the fortress of his
concentration.
• One of his parents came home a few minutes ago.
• Dad is out of town, presenting his latest physics theory at
Princeton and hoping for funding, a teaching position, or ideally, both.
• Mom had a job interview today. If things went well, she would’ve
burst into Sam’s room to tell him.
Sam puts down the sticks and the Elmer’s glue. Spurning the crutch
that leans against the wall, he pushes himself to his feet, careful not to put
too much weight on his left leg. That knee has a tendency to give way without
warning. The crutch helps, but he hates it.
There’s an eerie, horror- movie, what-am-I-going-to-find
feeling to those dozen steps down the hall that end at the sight of his mother
seated on the living room couch, bent forward with her head in her hands.
Cleopatra, their sleek black cat, rubs against her shins as if trying to
provide comfort. Or asking to be fed.
Her head jerks up, and for a second she tries to smile. Then her
face crumples and tears come. “I didn’t get it.”
That, he’d already guessed. He looks at the time.
It’s six o’ clock— later than he realized. “Were they interviewing you all this
time just to tell you no?”
She shakes her head. “The woman was late. Missed her plane in
Cincinnati. They said I could wait, that she was getting on the next flight. I
sat there for two hours. When she finally showed up, she told me she filled the
job on the plane, gave it away to the woman sitting next to her.
She laughed like I was supposed to think it was funny— some kid tried to steal
her bag and made her miss her first flight so that she ended up sitting next to
a friend from college who needed a job.” She throws out her hands.
“What was I supposed to say? I needed
that job!”
Sam plops down beside her on the couch and catches one of her
hands in his own. “You should’ve told her off , Mom.”
“I couldn’t. You can’t burn bridges.”
Sam looks at their hands together. Her fingers are white and too
thin, with nails bitten down to the nub. She slips her hand away from his and
shifts it to his damaged knee. “How’s the physical therapy?”
Sam hasn’t been to therapy in weeks. The owner of the place, the
guy who worked with Sam, was okay. But his wife ran the front
desk and reminded Sam every visit how much money they owed. She kept saying,
“Therapy can’t take the place of reconstructive surgery. Has that been
scheduled?” She knew perfectly well his parents didn’t have insurance or any
way to pay for surgery.
Cleo jumps onto the sofa beside him and butts her head against his
hand. Sam rubs her ears and says, “They gave me exercises to work on at home.”
His mother gazes at his face, and for a second Sam thinks she’s
going tell him he’s not allowed to quit therapy. But her eyes are distant. “I
have to call your father and tell him I didn’t get the job.”
Sam’s good leg jiggles up and down. “You don’t have to call him
tonight. Let him—” Let him present his proposal without
worrying about you. But he can’t say that.
“He knew I had this interview. He’s probably waiting to hear from
me.” She stands and picks up her phone while Sam watches, rubbing his hands
against his jeans legs. Her eyes dart to the Lowell family portrait hanging on
the wall above the bookshelves.
“We have more bad luck,” she whispers, “than any family ought to
have.”
After she leaves the room to make the dreaded call in private, Sam
stares at the photograph that’s been haunting him practically his whole life.
He doesn’t want to feed Mom’s paranoid delusions, but he has to
admit it sometimes seems like the universe holds a grudge against the Lowell
family.
With a sigh, he gets up to verify the number of pills his mother
has left in her prescription and prepare himself for the battle of getting her
to take them.
My team massacres our opponents on
Saturday morning, and Coach invites everyone to her house on Sunday for a make-
your- own taco celebration. During the ride home, Mom and I verbally replay
every high point of the game, and my good mood last s until we pull into our
neighborhood and I remember my promise to Alia.
It’s not that I’m such a goody- two- shoes about breaking one
small rule. And it’s not because I think I owe the Seers. Alia’s wrong about
that. My life isn’t a debt that needs to be paid. It’s an obligation.
The Seers didn’t just save me; they chose to have me raised by Agents and trained
as one myself. They have a purpose for me, and I don’t want to let them down.
Mom drops me off and turns the car around for a grocery run. I
shower and change, and then, even though I’m starving, I head for Alia’s house
because it’s almost one o’clock.
The four houses in our cul-de-sac belong to the families who make
up Miss Rose’s Agents— ours first , then the Riverses, the Li house, and the
Maliks. Miss Rose arranged it this way so we can avoid nosy neighbors and
support each other while executing our duties.
Switching bracelets is probably not what she had in mind.
Outside, my brother and Ty are playing basketball in our driveway.
Well, Marius is playing while Ty, who’s about as
athletic as belly button lint, stands to the side, hunched over his phone. “I’m
telling you, it’ll work,” he says to Marius, tossing blond hair out of his
eyes. “I’m positive.”
Eyes on the net, Marius ignores his friend. Which, in my opinion,
is a good thing because whatever Ty is planning will get Marius into trouble.
When they were eleven, they tried to blow up a tree stump with fi
reworks. Marius got his eyebrows singed off . When they were twelve, they used
Ty’s drone to strafe Melissa Pierce’s birthday party with VOTE MARIUS CLASS
PREZ campaign flyers . He lost all the girls’ votes.
“Marius,” Ty says loudly, trying to get his attention.
“In a minute.” Marius nails a jump shot. “And the crowd goes
wild!” He catches the ball on its bounce and struts in a circle, pumping his
arm.
“Hey, give it here!” I shout, holding out my hands.
My brother grins and passes the ball to me. I catch it, dart
around him, and execute a perfect lay-up. The ball drops through the hoop, and
Marius intercepts it. “Niiice. But not as good as mine. One-on-one?” He waggles
his eyebrows.
Ty glares balefully at me from beneath his bangs. I’m tempted
to say yes to thwart his latest caper, whatever it is.
Plus, Marius and I have an ongoing friendly competition over
sports, control of the television remote, and who finishes off the best
leftovers in the refrigerator.
We’re the same age, we think. He came to us when he was about
three years old, speaking Spanish. Dad was assigned to rescue him from a
burning building during a course correction and then, to the surprise and
delight of my parents, was instructed to keep him and raise him in our family.
“Maybe later,” I offer. “I promised to do something for Alia.”
“Chicken.” He only pretends to say it under his breath.
“You’ll pay for that!”
When I knock on Alia’s front door, she greets me wearing a headset
and talking into a mic. “RL, dudes,” she says.
“AFK, BRB.”
“LMNOP,” I joke.
Alia doesn’t laugh. I was hoping she’d tell me she already had a
course correction today and doesn’t need my help.
Instead, she shoves the bracelet at me, mouths the word Thanks, and shuts the door in my face.
So. Much. Gratitude.
I head home, stuffing Alia’s bracelet into my back pocket so
Marius and Ty don’t see it. I needn’t have bothered. They’re both
gone from the cul-de-sac when I walk through, and from the silence in our
house, I assume they’ve gone to Ty’s.
Lunch pickings are slim, which is why Mom went to the store, so I
heat a frozen burrito. When my back pocket starts beeping, I mistake it at first
for the microwave before fumbling Alia’s bracelet out.
The screen says:
Laptop on desk beside glass of water. Spill water. Blame the cat.
This seems pretty fail- proof. I wait for the burrito to finish
heating and gobble it down because I’m not leaving for any mission, simple or
not, on an empty stomach. With a belch, I jog upstairs to my bedroom to depart
from my usual launch point.
Since the Transporter always returns you to the precise point you
came from, everyone in my family has a designated location for departure.
Otherwise, you might land on an unsuspecting family member on your way back
into 3-space!
Inside my room, I unsnap my bracelet, lay it on my dresser, and
slip Alia’s on. It’s loose around my wrist , but not enough to slide off .
Standing on my fuzzy blue rug, I tighten the ponytail at the back of my head
and then push the call button.
When I feel the tug of the Transporter, I close my eyes and let it
yank me out of my universe.
Two seconds later, the bracelet hits a port- lock but doesn’t seem
to catch. My eyes fly open as my chest hits the console hard,
and I grab on with my free arm.
Making sure both feet are square in the middle of the platform, I check the
port- lock, but it’s securely latched after all. The landing felt different because
Alia’s bracelet fits loosely.
I exhale in relief. Falling into 4-space is not something any
Agent wants to do. Miss Rose often refers to Earth as a mem-brane world— or
sometimes braneworld—
because 4-space is so immense the entirety of our universe fits inside it like
a scrap of tissue. In spite of this, traveling by Transporter is supposed to be
absolutely safe— otherwise my parents wouldn’t allow me and Marius to do it.
I’m more likely to encounter something hazardous on Earth than here in the fourth
dimension.
At this moment, however— on an unauthorized mission— I don’t
exactly feel protected.
“Chill out,” I mutter. Releasing my death grip on the console, I
punch in the coordinate numbers from the bracelet screen. The platform shifts
through 4-space, the port- lock clicks open, and I’m dropped ana, back to
Earth.
I land in a bedroom— a small, cramped room where the bed and desk
and dresser are so close together there’s barely room to walk
between them. My arrival startles a black cat that was sleeping on the bed. It
leaps to the floor and bolts from the room, the bell on its collar jingling.
Judging by the decorations and the clothes sticking out of overstuffed
drawers, this is a boy’s room. There are lots of books, especially textbooks. A
crutch leans against one wall, and a laptop sits, as promised, on the desk next
to a glass of water. Hanging on the wall above it is an M. C. Escher print that
Miss Rose once used in a lesson on four dimensions.
The instructions say I’m supposed to blame the cat. So I better
catch the cat and shut it in this room before completing my mission.
The Seers probably planned this mission for a time when the
residence is empty, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious. I tiptoe down the hall
of what appears to be an apartment, approaching the entrance to a living room.
When I hear nothing— no voices, no TV— I call softly, “Here, kitty, kitty.”
The cat meows from the top of a waist -high set of bookshelves.
“Good kitty.” I approach slowly, wondering how to pick it up
without getting scratched or bitten. But when I reach out, the cat trills
happily and climbs into my arms. “Well, you’re friendly, aren’t you?”
He— no, she butts her head against my
chin. Scratching her ears, I glance up at a framed family
photograph hanging on the wall. It’s one of those formal portraits you can get
taken at the mall, the mom and dad seated on chairs in front of a fake backdrop
with their kids on their laps.
The boy, dressed in a little blue suit with a tie, looks like he’s
about three years old.
The girl is only a baby, sitting on her mom’s lap in a sleeve-less
pink dress. The beige skin of her left arm is marked by a stark white birthmark
that stretches across her elbow and halfway down her forearm.
My heart flops over in my chest . I drop the cat.
About Dianne K. Salerni:
Dianne K. Salerni has written many books for children
and young adults, including state-award nominated series The Eighth Day and
Junior Library Guild selection Eleanor, Alice, and the Roosevelt Ghosts. She attended
the University of Delaware and the University of Pennsylvania before teaching
fourth and fifth grades for many years. Now Dianne spends her time hanging
around creepy cemeteries, climbing 2,000-year-old pyramids for book research,
and volunteering at her local rescue animal shelter.
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest | Goodreads
| Amazon
Giveaway
Details:
3 winners will receive a finished copy of JADIE IN FIVE DIMENSIONS, US Only.
a Rafflecopter giveawayTour Schedule:
Week One:
|
10/18/2021 |
Kickoff Post |
|
|
10/18/2021 |
Excerpt |
|
|
10/19/2021 |
Excerpt |
|
|
10/19/2021 |
Excerpt |
|
|
10/20/2021 |
Excerpt |
|
|
10/20/2021 |
Excerpt |
|
|
10/21/2021 |
Review |
|
|
10/21/2021 |
Excerpt |
|
|
10/22/2021 |
Review |
|
|
10/22/2021 |
Spotlight/Excerpt |
Week Two:
|
10/25/2021 |
Review |
|
|
10/25/2021 |
Review |
|
|
10/26/2021 |
Review |
|
|
10/26/2021 |
Review |
|
|
10/27/2021 |
Review |
|
|
10/27/2021 |
Review |
|
|
10/28/2021 |
Review |
|
|
10/28/2021 |
Review |
|
|
10/29/2021 |
Review |
|
|
10/29/2021 |
Review |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.