Tender of the Strings is about a determined eleven-year old girl named DJ. In a bundle of dirty dish towels, she discovers what needs a home and love – a battered and abandoned puppet with no strings attached. She believes the puppet is a treasure, takes ownership of it and promises to find it a good home.
Throughout the story, challenges arise from people who want to take the puppet away because they believe it has some special value. Relentlessly, she fights these challenges and manages to keep the puppet.
Police now also want the puppet and order DJ to return it. Losing the puppet makes her sick and experience nightmares. Her grandmother and uncle aid in her recovery. Then, the newscast blaringly reports that the puppet mysteriously disappeared.
Feeling depressed but never giving up hope of reuniting with her puppet, she begs police to find the puppet and unravel the true story of her life. Police using new investigative tools locate the trapped puppet somewhere on a difficult to reach rooftop.
With dangers weather conditions and time running out, what can DJ do to save her puppet? And will the puppet live to reveal its big secret?
Kirkus Book Review
Title Information
Tender of the Strings
Mary Lingis
Book Information
A girl’s beloved new puppet entangles her in a sketchy situation in this debut middle-grade novel.
Dora Jane “DJ” Owens, almost 12, and her Uncle Rem help a pastry chef transport boxes of high-quality grapes. Their destination is a primo local restaurant in their Massachusetts city, where DJ spots an apparently discarded two-foot puppet without strings sporting “a blood-red bandana.”
She often treasures what others deem junk and asks the pastry chef if she can have this slightly battered, one-eyed puppet that she names Nefe (after Egyptian Queen Nefertiti). DJ promises to give the puppet “the love and care it needs.” On DJ and Rem’s 29-block walk home, they encounter people enchanted by Nefe, such as an antiques collector. But DJ won’t give her up; she wants to fix her and learn all she can about the puppet’s history.
Unfortunately, Nefe has ties to some shady individuals who may be looking to seize her. DJ vows to protect Nefe, even if that means becoming involved in an ongoing police investigation and putting herself in potential danger. Lingis’ young hero is compassionate and a touch overdramatic. The girl instantly falls in love with Nefe and continuously talks about the puppet as if she’s a living being with genuine feelings. This does create a solid parallelism between DJ and Nefe—the puppet is “abused and abandoned,” not unlike DJ’s vaguely described circumstances that include a mother who has died and an alcoholic father not in the tween’s life.
This engrossing book moves at a leisurely pace but builds tension with clear signs of the oppressive summer heat and a brewing hurricane off the East Coast. At the same time, there’s the possibility of lawbreakers in the mix, although this easygoing tale ensures that DJ is safe nearly all the time. She lives with a doting grandmother, her winsome uncle, and her sweet little brother while quickly charming almost everyone, from cops and that pastry chef to a former military helicopter pilot.
An engaging, lighthearted thriller that highlights a tween’s benevolence and resolve.