How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found [Library Binding]

Sara Nickerson (Author), Sally Wern Comport (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up

Margaret always knew that her family was a little strange. Not that she was exactly normal herself After all, she did do her sixth-grade science report on a pack of killer Chihuahuas. Even stranger was the fact that Margaret's mother never seemed to talk about anything anymore -- not since the mysterious drowning death of Margaret's father three years earlier.

Then Margaret's mother takes her and her little sister, Sophie, to an old abandoned mansion and places a FOR SALE BY OWNER sign in the front yard. But who could have lived there? And why was her mother keeping it all such a secret?

Convinced that her father's death, her mother's silence, and the mansion are somehow related, Margaret returns to the spooky old house alone, determined to make sense of three clues: a swimming medal, a key, and a strange, handwritten comic book about a boy who turned into a rat. With the help of Boyd, the lonely, comic-book-obsessed boy next door, she discovers that truth can be stranger than fiction -- depending upon who's telling the story.

An offbeat mystery about coincidence, fate, and the many different ways to tell the same story, How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found is the unforgettable tale of a twelveyear-old girl who discovers just how terribly beautiful and wonderfully bizarre the world and the people around her can be.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

First-time novelist Nickerson follows an arresting first paragraph with an ambitious but somewhat overengineered tale. Margaret's family has unraveled in the four years since her father's death her mother barely speaks, Margaret is such an outcast at school that she eats lunch in a bathroom stall and her bouncy little sister is obsessed with jigsaw puzzles. When her mother inexplicably drives them to an island and sets up a For Sale sign outside a derelict mansion, Margaret finds a package inside containing a strange comic book, her father's swimming medal and a rusty key. Why did her father drown if he was a champion swimmer? Who is the comic's author, Ratt, and what about the Drowning Ghost who features so largely in his book? Eventually, at the urging of her sole friend, Tina Louise (who all but disappears in the book's second half), Margaret runs away to the island to find answers. Together with Boyd, a lonely boy who lives next door to the mansion and is a Ratt fan (the comics appear regularly on the doorstep of the island's singularly odd library), she solves the multiple mysteries in a somewhat melodramatic climax. Juggling comic strip panels, multiple viewpoints and arch "editor's notes," Nickerson sets up a complex framework that at times works to the story's advantage by adding tension, but often simply overwhelms it. If the structure is unwieldy, the prose stays compelling throughout the sign of a writer with promise. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

Grades 6-10--Margaret Clairmont, 12, can barely remember her father or the last time her mother woke up long enough to take them somewhere beyond the grocery store and Laundromat. Their sudden unexpected visit to place a "For Sale by Owner" sign on a dilapidated mansion on an island in the Pacific Northwest is the basis of this interesting mystery. The resolution of a long-standing family tragedy is slowly pieced together in this novel that bears a strong resemblance to Margaret's little sister Sophie's favorite distraction, "THE HARDEST JIGSAW EVER MADE." Parts of the story are Margaret's, describing in a relatively straightforward fashion her secret return to the island to find an explanation for the comic she found in an unopened package addressed to her mother. Parts belong to Boyd, the boy who lives next door to the mansion physically but dwells emotionally within the comics that appear in the island's odd library. Underneath their story is that of an earlier unhappy teenager, who found himself growing physically repulsive as he matured. He became more and more reclusive, even ratlike, and grew to be a man who could never rid himself of his guilt over the death of his idolized older brother. Most of the story is told in prose, in first or third person, but some parts are revealed in the graphic form of the comic books. Even the narrator twists and turns, as the first-person storyteller's identity changes. The satisfying ending will reward readers who have made their way through this tangled tale, but all but the best will probably find themselves considerably confused along the way.
Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Library Binding: 288 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins (April 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060297727
• ISBN-13: 978-0060297725
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,247,317 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sara Nickerson started her career as a writer and producer for television and film. During a screenwriting class at the University of Washington she wrote "How To Disappear Completely and Never Be Found," which she then turned into her first novel. She's busy working on her second and third, this very minute.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richie's Picks: HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY, October 7, 2002

By 

Richie Partington "Richie's Picks" (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found (Library Binding)

"...Just one look inside this strange house--that was all I wanted.

"Do you know that feeling of doing something and at the same time of watching yourself? It's like watching a movie but you are the movie. And you're watching yourself talk and walk, but the whole time you're holding your breath and thinking, What is she going to do next? ...

"Scary" and "exciting" were the adjectives my ten-year-old son, Alex, used in explaining to me why he's read 100+ pages each of the past two days--... The book that's got him totally enthralled is HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY AND NEVER BE FOUND. I have to agree with Alex: from the book's opening moments--narrated by twelve-year-old Margaret--we are dropped squarely into an exciting and suspenseful tale:

"Most stories start at the beginning, but I really can't say I know where that is. Is it a falling-down mansion on a small island in the Pacific Northwest, or in the navy blue pickup truck making its way to that mansion? Does it start on a sunny day this year, or on a sunny day twenty years before? Is it with me, or with a young boy who, a long, long time ago, believed he was turning into a rat? I guess the only thing I really do know is where it started for me--in that navy blue pickup heading toward a place I didn't know existed. A place that had already changed my life."

The illustrations are an innovative and integral part of the book. They are snippets of Ratt, a comic series for which there is only one hand-drawn copy per issue. Those issues of Ratt appear regularly and mysteriously at the Island's library--a rather unique institution that carries only unpublished manuscripts, apparently all submitted by the Island's residents:

"Under D was not one novel by Dickens. H had no Hawthorne and F had no Frost. There was no Hemingway or Fitzgerald, no Eliot or Kuo. Instead they found stack after stack of handmade books. Some were typed, some were scribbled, some were printed out on cheap computer paper, some were stapled, some had brads, some were held together with twine.

" 'The unpublished works of Everyman,' exclaimed Mr. Librarian proudly. 'Everywoman and Everykid, too.' "

Boyd, the boy who lives next to that eerie mansion, has long been the devoted fan of Ratt. He and Margaret, who arrives in her mother's navy blue pickup, and the comic book series with a life of its own become entangled in the mysteries of the mansion and of the death of Margaret's father four years earlier. They are surrounded by quirky characters such as Mr. Librarian, Margaret's funny and exasperating little sister Sophie, and their mom, who has been barely coping since her husband's disappearance.

HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY AND NEVER BE FOUND is a haunting and fun find for middle grade readers.

...

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the GREATEST books I've ever read!, April 26, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found (Hardcover)

I was quick to judge this book by its eirie cover. I am a lover of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, but this book intrigiued me from the moment I picked it up. It is told in 3rd person unlimited formatt, written from the alternating views of both twelve year old Margaret, and Boyd, a boy who lives next to a mansion owned by Margaret's family. Boyd is an avid reader of the Ratt comics, which he picks up from the odd little Library in town. They are based on the life of the main character Ratt, who supposedly resides in the creepy mansion next to Boyds house. It all starts when Margaret and her deeply depressed mother Lizzie and her annoyingly hyperactive sister Sophie arrive at the mansion with a for sale by owner sign in the back of their blue pickup.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining, imaginative book full of quirky characters, September 13, 2002

By 

Wesley "Wesley" (Denton, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found (Hardcover)

I gave the book 5 stars for enjoyment. This is a fun book.

The author has given us many ways in which to see the characters and the story, by using different narratives (including the anonymous editor) and letting us get a taste of the wonderful Rat Man comic strip. I didn't find this method of switching back and forth confusing at all. I read this book as fast as I could to get to the end: to understand the mystery of the Rat Man.
I really rooted for the kids in this story. It is definitely a book about the underdog. It is also about friendship. And the power of imagination. It was very clever little book. If I had read it when I was 12, I would probably have wanted to be Rat Man, too.