Crookhaven: The School for Thieves
J.J. Arcanjo
Meet Gabriel Avery. On the outside he looks like a perfectly normal 13 year-old boy, but in fact he is a boy with a talent which few others have. Gabriel is a pickpocket who can steal wallets, phones, cash, jewellery. You name it, and he can lift it from any pocket of any person. But, Gabriel is NOT a bad person – he just wants to be able to help his devoted grandma put food on the table so both he and she won’t go hungry again.
One day, Gabe’s talents are spotted – not by the police – but by the eccentric head of Crookhaven, a secret school for criminals where the arts of pickpocketing, forgery, deception plus breaking and entering are all taught rather than English, Maths and Science classes. However, this is a school which teaches its students to do wrong in order to to put the world right. In fact, Crookhaven shows its students how to be criminals with a sense of morality – to steal from the bad people in society to give back to the innocents. Now enrolled in the school, Gabriel has a battle on his hands to show that he can be the top student and therefore be the best crook of all…
This is a safe-cracking, highly entertaining, page-turning story which will appeal to any young person who has ever thought that it might be fun to break all the rules to help the less well-off in society. You will adore Gabriel whose heart is always in the right place even when his fingers are, arguably, in the wrong place, raking the pockets of others. However, he only wants to take from the rich to give something back to the poor and needy. You will also enjoy meeting Gabriel’s friends at Crookhaven who, together with him, become an unstoppable force in their efforts to become crooks with honour and integrity, always trying to do the right thing.
If you like this story (and I am sure you will), then you can get hooked on the rest of the series moving on to the next book, Crookhaven: The Forgotten Maze.
Published by Hodder Children’s Books, 2023 (336 pages)
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