The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci

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Bibliographic Information:

The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci

ISBN: 978-0-15-206386-3

2000, Harcourt Books, Orlando, FL

Plot Summary:

This story begins in the present, with Torey Adams in a boarding school dorm. After a brief social encounter, Torey turns the story to the past, when his life was altered by the disappearance of Chris Creed.

When Torey was 16, he had a nice circle of friends and good social standing in his high school. His school had a social division between the middle class kids Torey was a part of and the poor kids they called boons. One day Chris Creed sends a cryptic email to the principal and disappears. Chris Creed was on everyone’s bad side, but the disappearance causes a larger rift between the haves and the have nots in Torey’s school.

Torey and his buddies get access to the principal’s email and read Chris’s cryptic message. It just piques their interest in the mystery even more. Torey winds up investigating with Chris’s neighbor, Ali, who it turns out had been observing Chris for quite a while. Ali is also in a relationship with one of the “boons”, who turns out to be a great protector.

Through their investigation, Torey and Ali get their hands on Chris’s journal and find that he had an elaborate social life at his summer job on the boardwalk. When they look further, they find that the elaborate story is quite embellished, but a psychic on the boardwalk tells Torey that he will find a body in the woods. What transpires when Torey can’t resist the woods changes his life forever.

Critical Evaluation:

Plum-Ucci tells this story in a flashback, from the perspective of Torey Adams. Because of the flashback plot device, we know that Torey survives his ordeal a changed person. This makes it easier to understand when the rifts between Torey and his buddies appear. We knew Torey had left his old high school for some reason and his social isolation is exposed in the flashbacks.

There are two instances of foreshadowing that stick out in the story. The first is mentioning that Bob Haines wandered off decades ago and disappeared. Haines was devastated after the disappearance of his son and could never accept that he drove his son away. He wandered into the old Indian burial grounds and was never seen again.

The second foreshadowing was when Mr. Ames tells Mrs. Creed that she did not know what her son was like. These two factors, joined with the information that Mrs. Creed grew up a boon, contribute to the development of the story. Mrs. Creed’s pressure on Chris drove him away the way Bob Haines did his son. Mrs. Creed fought her way out of the boons, so she does not trust the people stuck there.

The message that reputation means more than reality is expressed by Ali, who says, “People are blind…all they see is a person’s reputation.” Chris Creed was a weird kid by reputation. Is it possible that inside he was different?

Reader’s Annotation:

When Christopher Creed disappears without a trace, the lives of the people around him change forever.

Author Information:

Carol Plum-Ucci’s seven Harcourt novels have drawn many awards and honors. Her first publication, The Body of Christopher Creed, earned her a Michael L. Printz Honor Book Award in 2002, and she was named a finalist in the Edgar Allan Poe Awards. The sequel, Following Christopher Creed, continues the perils of Steepleton from where 16-year-old Creed disappeared and has never resurfaced.

Plum-Ucci received her bachelor’s in communication from PurdueUniversity and her master’s in arts from Rutgers. She has ghost written for six Miss Americas, two CEOs and others who are nameless by discretion. Her many professional awards include a Dalton Penn Award and two Iris Awards for excellence in Miss America publications. She was a recipient of a Kneale Award in Journalism from PurdueUniversity.

She has two daughters and lives in Southern New Jersey.

Retrieved from http://carolplumucci.com/about-carol/ on 8/4/2015

Genre(s): 

Fiction, Mystery, Suspense

Curriculum Ties: Bullying

Booktalk Ideas: This book ties into book talk themes of identity, reputation, and bullying.

Reading level: Grade 7+

Interest age: 12+

Challenge Issues: Challenge Defense File

Why I chose this book:

This book is a Printz Award winner and was required reading for LIBR-265, so it made sense to add it to our collection. The mystery in this novel adds a unique aspect to the collection.