World Famous Comics: The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore
The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore
By: Joan Lowery Nixon Publisher: Harcourt Paperbacks Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Harcourt Paperbacks Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 320 Publication Date: March 01, 2004 Reading Level: Young Adult
She spots the masked man in the dark, lonely parking lot--but too late. Grabbed and drugged, Christina is kidnapped and held for ransom. When her family pays, she thinks her ordeal is over. But then she realizes that her family thinks she planned the kidnapping! How will Christina prove her innocence?
The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore is a thought provoking mystery that really makes the reader relate to the main character (Christina) and feel what she feels. The book has a clever plot, descriptive writing, and good character development. Although it is somewhat anticlimactic, I would recommend it to anyone from a teen to adult age that is looking for an interesting and unique mystery. Towards the beginning of the book, Christina Lattimore is kidnapped and held for ransom in a dingy basement for a few days. She is finally let out, but through a twisted turn of events, she is believed to have planned her own kidnapping! Here starts Christina's quest to prove her innocence to the cops, public, her peers, and even her friends and family! The author's writing really brings you into the story and makes you feel Christina's pain and frustration. For readers who greatly sympathize with characters, the realism of the emotional stress might get to be a bit too much, but this ability to relate with Christina is more of a positive point for the book than a negative one. Christina's quest to find the real kidnapper made me want to keep reading, but the ending really wasn't what I felt it should be. Although it was a surprise, I thought Christina's discovery was a bit anticlimactic to the action throughout the rest of the book. Altogether, I found The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore to be a unique book and a good read for mystery lovers.
Simpleton The ending was a little disappointing. I was hoping for more action or something at least. Not just Christina saying it was Professor Mustard in the dinning room.
Helplessness Helplessness defined my reading experience for this novel. Christina Lattimore is likable main character, and the reader follows as she spends chapters two through eight (pages 21-202) indignant and helpless. Over half the novel I didn't enjoy, because I empathized too much. This reminded me of Misery; the main character also suffers a life-changing psychologically torturous experience.
Christina does overcome her adversity, so the novel makes three stars. Joan Lowery Nixon won an Edgar award ('Juvenille') for this in 1980. Highly recommended to me, but NOT by me. The combination of suspense and helplessness made it mediocre reading, and I'd avoid it unless you like psychological mysteries. If so, don't let the young adult label stop you; I found the mystery itself sophisticated despite disliking the emotional undertones.
Suspense at its best! The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore by Joan Lowery Nixon is a young adult mystery. Joan Lowery Nixon has written more than 130 books. She is the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best young adult mystery.
The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore is about a girl named Christina who is kidnapped. The person who kidnaps her sneaks up on her in the dark while she is coming home. Christina is kept in an old basement where she struggles to stay alive. The odd thing is that the people who kidnapped Christina feed her and let her take a bath and let her change clothes. When Christina is found and returns home, her parents think that she planned her own kidnapping. Christina tries to prove that her side of the story is true. Will she or will she fail?
I would recommend it to people who are ages 11 to 15. The book is both mysterious and suspenseful. I really enjoyed it.
-- Madison Bakri
Lauren Burke's amazing review! "What are you doing? I'm Christina Lattimore. These people kidnapped me!" (Nixion, 1979, pg.123). "She worked this thing out to look like a kidnapping! She wanted to get the money from her grandmother! You saw her with the gun!" (Nixon, 1979, pg.123). Christina Lattimore is normal teenage girl. She goes to school, hangs out with her friends and like most teenagers she doesn't like her parents. One day while she went to open the front door to her house and noticed a piece of cell phone tape over the lock. She went and told her maid Rosella about it and when they came back down stairs it was gone. That night after dinner she went to her friend Lorna's house to hang out. She had to leave early to go home and as she's walking to the front steps someone steps out in front of her, covers her mouth and she bites them. The next thing she knows she wakes up in a cold basement on a cot. She has no idea where she is. The door at the top of the steps opens and a man comes in and tells her to sign a piece of paper but she wont so he leaves her there and goes back upstairs. As Christina is in this basement she does many things to try and get out. Like as the man is downstairs with her she gets up and runs for it but that doesn't work, she gets a hinge from the furnace door and tries to opens the lock with it but that also doesn't work and she tries to pound the window for help but again that doesn't work. Then she finds a way to listen in on her two kidnappers. She learns that if you put your head in the furnace, that's doesn't work, there is an open vent and you can hear everything that they are talking about. She learns the names of the kidnappers, Zach and Loretta. One day Zach comes down and tells her to come upstairs with her because she is leaving soon. When they get upstairs he makes her get a glass of water and drink it, turn the light switches on and off, touch door handles and turn the TV on and turn channels. Then he has her take a shower and change her clothing that he stole from her house. Loretta comes in to watch her as she watches TV and Zach runs somewhere quickly. When he comes back he calls for Loretta because he has the ransom money. The police come in yelling, Loretta, who is holding a gun throws it at Christina to hold. The police come in and arrest everyone. Zach tells the police that's Christina planned all of this to look like a kidnapping. Christina is so surprised, she knows she didn't do it but now there is evidence everywhere that she was in the house like a normal person not as a person who was kidnapped. I'm going to leave the ending for you to read and find out if Zach and Loretta were ever caught. I really liked this book because it was a quick book to read because it was interesting and kept your attention so you never wanted to put it down. I have a hard time being able to stay focused on one thing for a while unless it is really interesting and this was a book that could keep my attention making me want to keep reading and find out what is going to happen. I'm also the kind of person who hates a book where it takes three chapters to get where the book starts to get good I like when it gets right into the interesting stuff and this is that kind of book. This book is a mystery book and if you like mystery's or murder mystery's this book is for you and even if you don't like to read these kinds of books I encourage you to try to read this book and see if you like it and if you still don't that's ok but at least you tried.
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