hurtling straight into the arms of her now husband), in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Beijing, on an oil rig in the middle of Bohai Bay, in New Jersey, and now in New Haven, Connecticut.
She’s written several books for teens, including the Witch’s Child trilogy: Julia Vanishes, Julia Defiant, and Julia Unbound.
Egan applied the Page 69 Test to Sneaks, her middle-grade debut, and reported the following:
On page 69 of Sneaks, Ben is looking through the Book of Keys – the mysterious book that an old lady entrusted to him and his friends, asking them to hide it, before she wound up in a coma. Although he has seen one Sneak already – an interdimensional mischief-maker, in the form of his teacher’s watch crawling across the floor – he doesn’t yet know what they are or what they are planning, and he doesn’t know why the Book of Keys is full of strange instructions about getting from one room to another. He is piecing together clues but is still a long way from understanding the puzzle within the book – or the threat to the universe!Visit Catherine Egan's website.He flipped another page and paused. This one was different from the others. There were no instructions. “A room with four pillars and a deep well, within which lies the seal over the gap.” There was nothing else. The letter had mentioned a seal too, hadn’t it? He snatched up the letter and looked at it. “May the seal remain ever closed and all the Sneaks on the other side of it.” Whatever that meant. The creepy poem about chaos unfolding at the beginning of the book had started out mentioning the seal too – “The Mouth of the Seal / Is Molded to Hold / The Blood of the Young / The Flesh of the Old.” So what was the seal?”This page also hints toward some of the problems Ben’s younger brother Leo is having. Leo interrupts Ben while he is looking at the book, and Ben is a little impatient with him. Leo needs Ben’s help and support, but Ben is too caught up in the mystery of the book to notice what’s going on with his brother.Leo watched him quietly for a minute longer and then said, “Can I have Morpheus in my room tonight?”The book is a sci fi mystery / puzzle, but also very much about family and friendship. Ben tries and fails and tries again to be a good friend and a good brother. Page 69, it turns out, is a nice representative of the book as a whole – it offers both the puzzle aspect of the book and the family aspect, in both cases hinting at further drama to come.
Ben looked up, surprised. Leo was leaning on the doorframe, chewing a fingernail.
“Why?”
“I have bad dreams sometimes.”
For a moment, Ben wanted to say no way. Morpheus was his dog. He was the one who took care of him.
Q&A with Catherine Egan.
--Marshal Zeringue
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