The Door in the Lake
Nancy Butts
 
Ages: 9–11
Grades: 4–6
Pages: 160 Joseph Finney disappeared from a tent in a national forest and mysteriously reappeared two years later. He doesn’t remember what happened to him but even more disturbing is that he doesn’t look a day older than when he left. Chronologically fourteen, he looks and sounds and feels like a twelve-year-old boy. Joey battles strange physical conditions: a persistent runny nose that the doctor says is leaking brain fluid, a ringing in his ears that turns into a voice telling him to “come to the door-r-r in the lake,” and periodic seizures during which he seems to remember being sucked into a vortex of light at the campground where he disappeared. Joey turns to two college students who contact him via the Internet to suggest that he was kidnapped by aliens. He doesn’t want to accept that, but as his physical condition deteriorates there seems to be no choice but to return to the lakeside camp where he disappeared and confront what happened to him