#COINKEEPER SERIES#

#COINKEEPER SERIES#

Part of the storyline of this first volume in the series consists of Avery’s recalling a story told by his grandfather. You can’t lose the coin, or you might never return.” The coins pick us”, and another, “Just remember that once you’ve taken a coin, you must keep that coin right with you, until you’re ready to come back home. However, before Avery inherits the bag and becomes the “coinkeeper”, his grandfather says that he must learn some lessons connected to its ownership, with one being, “We don’t pick the coins. Whether Avery comes to see possessing the bag as being a gift or a curse will be, according to Grandpa, for Avery to decide. Since the time of the bag’s origins, it has been passed on to the previous owner’s first-born son, but, since Grandpa’s only child was Avery’s mother, Grandpa tells Avery that he will eventually become the bag’s owner. That coin becomes the vehicle for sending its possessor to some period and location in the past. However, if the bag’s owner reached inside, he would pull out just one coin and never the same coin. Anyone can hear the coins jingling, but, if they were to look inside the bag, it would appear empty. Prior to the gifting, the king had taken the bag to a wizard who cast a spell on it.

According to Grandpa’s telling, a long ago, a king had given a farmer a bag filled with coins as a reward for the farmer’s having saved the king’s only son from drowning. However, Avery recalls that some months earlier Grandpa had shared some of his secrets with him, including the history of the bag of coins Grandpa always carries with him. My mom assumed that he’d died, and she said his secrets went to the grave with him. Mom said he also went to a lawyer and set up a trust, whatever that means, so that our house would belong to our family forever. On the day my grandpa left, he paid off my mom’s house and gave her so much money that she would never ever have to worry. Prior to the book’s action, it appears that Grandpa has either gone missing or is dead because: For some unknown reason, Avery’s mother appears to have an antagonistic relationship with her father, and Avery seems to be the only one in the family who has a relationship with the old man and time for his stories. Grandpa, however, lives in a shed on the property, a shed that he keeps locked when he is absent. Avery, who lives with his mother, has two sisters and six brothers, and he shares his bedroom with two of his younger brothers. Another oddity about Grandpa is that he always carries a bag of clanking coins on his belt strap. In the opening book, readers meet the series’ two central characters, 11-year-old Avery and his grandfather, with the latter being the object of community derision because of his appearance and the crazy stories he tells. “The Avery Chronicles” is a hi-lo time slip fantasy series aimed at middle school students who are either reluctant readers or who are reading below their expected reading level.

Coinkeeper