Undercover...Mother?

Karen Maxwell is the heroine of George Washington Stepped Here, the first mystery by K.D. Hays. Since Karen gets to do all the talking in the book, her son Evan asked for some time here to share his side of the story...

My mom is so embarrassing! While most other moms have normal jobs like working in a doctor’s office or some nice building where everyone wears suits, my mom works in my uncle’s office in a crummy building that’s like 600 years old and looks like it could fall down any minute. But that’s not the worst part about her job. Uncle Dave is a private investigator and now Mom thinks that just because she works for him, she should be an investigator, too. An undercover investigator.

Yeah, maybe it sounds cool, but it really isn’t. She’s going “undercover” as a mom taking her kids to volunteer at a historic site. That means taking me along. And my useless sister, Alicia. The people there dress up in weird clothes and pretend like they’re living back at the time of George Washington. Mom won’t let me bring my Nintendo or even my soccer ball.

I think I’ll probably die of boredom.

I don’t know why she has to go there anyway. She said somebody stole something, but I’ve never seen anything there worth stealing. Except maybe the sodas in the gift shop.

There is one good thing about the place, and that’s when I get to help this guy in the blacksmith shop. He showed me how to make stuff by heating up metal until its burning red super mega hot and then you can bend it and flatten it and stuff. No other kids get to do this, just me. Since I’m a volunteer.

Or maybe it’s because the blacksmith guy went on a date with my mom. She said it wasn’t a date but Alicia says it was and she’s always reading magazines with boys on the cover and pretending she knows something about dates.

So, anyway, don’t read George Washington Stepped Here because it’s really embarrassing. (But you can read the next book, Worth Its Weight in Old, since we don’t have to wear funny clothes in that one.)

And you can read pages from my sister’s diary if you visit the author’s website at http://www.kdhays.com/. You can also read more about the author at the site, too, but I don’t think you should. She’ll probably just say something that would embarrass her kids.