by Leslie Connor
ages: 10+
First sentence: “I saw it like this: a single worker at some faraway oil refinery with his head tilted down, peering into a pipe, waiting for one more drop that never came.”
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The unthinkable has happened: we’ve run out of oil. It’s not because of anything really drastic: no catastrophic natural events or wars. There is simply no more oil. Which means no more gasoline.

This means that 14-year-old Dewey Marriss and his four siblings are home alone — their parents are stranded in Maine on vacation — for who knows how long. In addition, the little bike shop they own and run is suddenly no longer little. Bikes are the new transportation, and everyone needs theirs fixed. Now. It all starts out okay, but the longer the crunch goes one, the more stressed the siblings become. It doesn’t help that Dewey thinks parts are slowly going missing; can he figure out who the thief is before everything completely collapses.

It’s a vaguely dystopian premise, though an interesting one to explore: what would happen to society and the infrastructure if the oil — for whatever reason — ran out? The book doesn’t go as far as a dystopian does: it really is a story of how Dewey and his siblings deal with the crisis. And it’s fascinating how that happens. It helps a lot that Connor’s writing is incredibly engaging; she keeps it simple yet doesn’t talk down to her readers. The mystery element comes on slowly, and it’s not really a central aspect to the book, but it’s still interesting.

Most of all, though, it’s an immensely entertaining book, one that kept me turning pages.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)