Things That Are

By Author: Stephen Covey
Total Articles: 74
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Two years have passed since Bobby Phillips woke up one wintry Chicago morning, took a shower, checked out his face in a mirror, and discovered he'd become invisible overnight! He is still close friends with Alicia Van Dorn, the blind girl he met in the University of Chicago library who helped him figure out a way to become visible again. Now Alicia picks up the story where Clements ended the first book, Things Not Seen, bringing the reader up to date on the status of their relationship and their plans for college.

Bobby is planning on pursuing his trumpet playing by attending a music school somewhere outside of Chicago, and Alicia is determined not to be left behind because she is blind. With Bobby's ambitions to encourage her, and with Tag Heuer Replica her new guide dog, Gertie, to facilitate her freedom, Alicia is learning to become more independent every day and is making plans for her own future. But she is not certain that her future will include Bobby. He has been acting mysteriously ever since a trip to New York City, where he met ...
... a girl named Gwen. And speaking of mysterious, what have her father and Bobby's father been doing behind the closed doors of her father's study.

After Alicia meets an enigmatic British man who is another victim of a puzzling case of invisibility, Alicia soon becomes involved in Bobby's and her father's secrets against her will. Bobby believes that William, the invisible man who followed him from New York to Chicago, may be a dangerous criminal, and he warns Alicia to have nothing to do with him. The FBI is hot on William's trail, but Alicia believes he is being hunted because the authorities are suspicious of his invisibility, not because he has committed a crime.

When the FBI begins to watch Alicia's house, she cannot be sure if they are waiting to catch William or trying to gather information on the secret experiments on invisibility the two fathers have been conducting in the study. Against her parents' and Bobby's wishes, Alicia decides to trust William and to hide him from the authorities. Not wanting to implicate her parents in the crime of aiding a fugitive, Alicia enlists Bobby's help, and together they move the stranger to Bobby's empty home for safekeeping. Alicia has also developed a plan for restoring William's visibility.

If the plan works, will Alicia and Bobby be confronted in the flesh by a dangerous criminal what if William decides to sell the secret of invisibility to unprincipled scientists Could Alicia and Bobby be compromising not only their own safety but also national security by helping this stranger

Written for junior high and high school students, this book is as appealing as Clement's first book in the series. Clements keeps the Tag Heuer Carrera Replica reader guessing until the end about the motives of the newly introduced invisible William. This book offers fans more details about the budding relationship between Bobby and Alicia and provokes the reader to consider the implications of developing invisibility as a military weapon in the world. Things That Are is another fast and fascinating read by Andrew Clements, sure to delight middle and high school students.