The Cave

Allen offers an earnest tale about a family finding a lost Aztec treasure in California. Friends Keegan and Brad regularly explore the land around their home in an old mining town. Recently, they’ve become interested in mummies that were supposedly discovered in a nearby cave in 1879. The location of the cave has been lost to history, but the boys are determined to find it, eventually uncovering a cave with a skeleton and Aztec artifacts. Later, the boys—along with Tom’s father and a few staffers from a natural history museum—discover that the tomb is actually a map, but with hidden gold possibly at stake, not everyone’s motives are scholarly in nature. Allen’s story reads like a clean-cut adventure from the 1950s: the good characters are essentially flawless, the (rather-adult-focused) narrative rarely misses a chance to comment on the appearance of the few female characters, local Native Americans are referred to as Indians throughout, and morality lessons abound. The historical information Allen provides adds color, but other details remain hazy, from the boys’ ages to when exactly the story is meant to take place. Ages 8–12. (BookLife)