“What you need to know about him back then is that if the police put seven college students in a lineup looking for the one who played trombone in the marching band, Calvin Sweeney would be picked, ten times out of ten.”

From Sue Halpern’s Summer Hours at the Robbers Library.

Kit is a reference librarian that works at the Riverton Public Library and keeps to herself as much as possible; she is obsessive about her job, her privacy, and her past, constantly living in fear that her mysterious past will repeat itself.  Sunny is fourteen years old, a member of the no-school movement, and has been raised mainly off-the-grid by her parents, Willow and Steve (using the words “mom” and “dad” is just another attempt at control by the system).  After trying to steal a dictionary from a bookstore in the mall, Sunny is sentenced to daily volunteer hours at the library for the entire summer, and Kit is designated as her supervisor.  The two could not be any more opposite with the energetic Sunny instantly making friends wherever she goes and the bookish Kit driven to near-hermit status because of her past.  While Kit and Sunny handle the regulars of the library, they are both captivated by the arrival of a mysterious patron named Rusty whose sudden arrival in town changes the library’s dynamic.  As the summer progresses, Sunny gets closer to both Kit, Rusty, and the truth of her own past which leads to a summer that will change all of their lives forever.

This story is both witty and complex (witty through writing style and complex through unexplained flashbacks) which makes for an entertaining read.  The main mystery of the book centers around Kit’s character and past as the introduction tells the beginning and the first chapters tell the ending, leaving the rest of the book to find out the middle.  Some readers will struggle to connect with Kit’s character, but her interactions with the other characters (especially Sunny) truly make the book enjoyable.  While readers with a connection to the library and literary worlds will most appreciate the book, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library will captivate a wide variety of readers.