The most common problem with writing dystopian novels seems to be the lack of world building, and <u>The Paper Museum</u> suffers the same fate. We're thrust into this world where paper is obsolete, and all this extensive technology exists, but magic is "outlawed"? But why? What happened? What year even is it? Where are we? Cities aren't named and are referred to by vague directions. Young children (12/13 years old) are expected to hold 10 internships and choose jobs? It's like Simpson chose elements of the past and elements of a perceived future to create this dystopian world, but none of those choices are expanded upon. Maybe in the last half of the book Simpson proves me wrong and explains everything, but I just couldn't muster up enough interest to see this one through.

I couldn't really connect to any of the characters, I felt no real friendship between Jane & Lydia, the adults all fell flat, and the premise of the story just wasn't that interesting to me. I would imagine most of my students would get bored of this one and abandon it like I ultimately did.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ -- Great cover on this one!

What an exceptional debut book this was! The writing was top notch. The plot was original. It was well paced. The setting was just so unique. Paper has become obsolete and physical books and remnants of writing/printing are now museum pieces. The characters were likable (mostly 😉) and well developed. I honestly don't have a bad thing to say about this one. I'd love to see it turned into on ongoing series! 👍🏻👍🏻

**ARC Via NetGalley**

'The Paper Museum,' by Kate S. Simpson just calls to book lovers! A museum library that holds the key to finding missing parents. A fun Middle Grade novel.

A promising recipe with an underbaked execution and very little to chew on.

Young Lydia lives in a future where paper is obsolete (why?) and everyone uses a tiny portable computer that can be worn on the hand as a ring. Her family runs the last place (in the city? in the world?) that still keeps paper, a museum whose real function is about much more than preserving the printed word. She's happy to spend every day browsing those pieces of history (where are schools?), which sometimes contain ancient, inexplicable symbols like # and &, that have gone out of use (how?) and lend an air of mystery to the relics she lives with.

But one day, her parents vanish (what do they even do?) and Lydia, desperate to find them, files a report with the city government, with the unexpected consequence that, if her parents don't show up, the city will take ownership of the museum (who in their right mind approved that law?). Now Lydia must solve the case of her missing parents before she loses her home too (but what does that mean if we don't know how the rest of society works?).

The Paper Museum is a frustrating read. The microcosm inside the museum is described in abundant, at times excessive detail, while the world outside of it is a nebulous blank that may as well be made of air. Since we only follow Lydia, who basically never leaves the museum, the significance of a world without paper is lost because we never get to see that world. Her quest to locate her parents (and thus the reader's interest in the plot) is interrupted by the arrival of an uncle whose personality stops at "grumpy because reasons," and the duty to train new interns who happen to come to work with Lydia at this same time. Much is made of an ominous "mayor's initiative" that somehow threatens the museum, but neither the initiative nor the nature of the threat are explained. Days pass without anything really happening because the plot needs to give Lydia time to get to know the interns, but the importance of these characters in the final resolution is at best tangential (one of them is more than they claim, but even that one is underwhelming).

It's a pity that so much opportunity for wonder and excitement is wasted here. The idea of a sheltered place dedicated to preserving paper is immensely interesting, but hardly anyone visits the museum, so we don't learn what the place means to the people of this future. The educational system in this society is clearly different from ours, but we only get the barest essentials to explain the plot, so we don't get a sense of what our young heroine thinks about her prospects in life and her place in the cultural scene. This novel is made of concrete events without a context, written with a hyperfocused lens covered with blinkers. Only Lydia and her immediate interactions matter.

At some point we're told that this is a world that has banned magic, and part of Lydia's quest to find her parents is about rediscovering magic, but again, we're missing the why, the how, the when. The use of a narrator restricted exclusively to Lydia's thoughts and interests may be intended to reflect how little a child really understands about the larger world and the big picture, but what little remains in view is not solid enough to sustain a story. Lydia herself is a painfully generic character, and the rest of the cast is consistently one-note. Her best friend is gentle (and nothing else), her uncle is harsh (and nothing else), the mayor is malicious (and nothing else). When Lydia figures out the clues to where her parents went, we just have to trust that she got it right, because we're not even told enough rules about the magic to follow her reasoning or feel any anticipation about her solution.

There's undeniable potential in this story that could have been fulfilled with more rounds of revision and polishing. This is a novel with plenty of material to spark curiosity, but nothing to satisfy it.


The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10.

Penalties: −1 for less than barebones worldbuilding, −1 for overly simple characterization.

Nerd Coefficient: 4/10.

The Paper Museum is a magical book about Lydia and her family, the curators of the Paper Museum. Set in the future where paper is obsolete, the museum is a place for people to come and see what paper used to be used for: books, advertisements, matchboxes, typewriters, printing presses, etc. Lydia finds out that the museum may not be just about paper when her parents go missing. She stays with her Uncle Lem until he too disappears one day. Stuck with her grumpy Uncle Renald, and 3 interns, Lydia sets out to bring back her parents and her uncle. This was a fun book with a great story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

Thank you to the author, Union Square Kids and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This middle-grade children's book plunges you right into the dystopian world it's set in - a world where paper is obsolete and technical gadgets are the rule. The complete lack of world-building made getting into the flow of the story difficult. The characters were not fleshed out at all, and their at times strange and unexplained behavior served mainly to move the plot forward, but not in any cogent way. The author's love of books and libraries shines through, and that was what kept me reading, although I didn't love the book as such.

A fantastic concept for a book - what if paper was obsolete? a question that many of us have asked over the years. I enjoyed this book. It was a very entertaining story. A bit slow to start but I enjoyed it in the end. I particularly loved the dedication Kate S. Simpson has to books and libraries which shines through this book.

In a world where paper is obsolete and magic is all but forgotten, Lydia has moved into the Paper Museum with her Uncle Lem following the disappearance of her parents. Convinced the key to finding them lies in the museum's book collection, Lydia spends her days digitally scanning her way through the museum's library.
But when Uncle Lem is called away and her Uncle Renald is put in charge of the museum, Lydia's scanning project comes to an abrupt halt. Uncle Renald takes her aer reader--the personal device that everybody uses for reading, shopping, messaging, and more--but not before Lydia makes a desperate attempt at filing a missing persons report for her parents.
The report activates a countdown, and now with nothing but a secret typewriter in her dogwood fort and a cryptic message, Lydia has thirty days to find her parents and stop the mayor from commandeering the museum. Otherwise, both her family home and the Paper Museum itself will be reassigned to someone else. With aer readers on the fritz and the town descending into chaos, Lydia needs to find her parents before the Paper Museum--and her parents--are lost for good.

This was an epic adventure that I was truly invested in. I thought it was a quirky, individual idea setting the story in a time when paper has become obsolete and is now seen as a relic, a museum piece… I loved it.

Lydia was a fantastic protagonist and I really liked her tenacity, determination and resilience to find her parents and get answers about their disappearance. With the right amount of magic, suspense and excitement this was a great read and I’d love to read more books by Simpson as I throughly enjoyed her ideas and writing style.

I liked this book a lot but it seemed to end very abruptly and a little to easily with all the issues tied up in a neat little bow in the last 20 pages or so. It also took me awhile to get into the story. I had trouble originally connecting to the characters and the plot. I was intrigued enough to continue to find out what happened and got sucked in about a third of the way through. I just wish the end hadn't felt so rushed.

I received an electronic ARC from Union Square Kids through NetGalley.
Readers are taken to a world where paper is obsolete and everyone relies on technology to do it all. Not a new premise, but Simpson introduces us to a young girl, Lydia, who lives at the Paper Museum. She is there with her uncle, the curator, because her parents are missing. Hints of magic slide through the early part of the book but nothing comes together until the final chapters. Everything is resolved in the end but it's a bit too formulaic for me. The characters are interesting but readers don't learn much about them beyond their usefulness to move the plot forward. Middle grade readers will enjoy seeing this world, and reading this should lead to dialogue on valuing different aspects of life.

For those who love paper and books

When I read a technical paper or a news story, I often find myself wondering, "Why are you telling me this? Where are you going with it?" I felt that way through much of the first half of The Paper Museum. The story is told in the first person by Lydia, whose Uncle Lem is curator of The Paper Museum. Lydia and Lem live in a technological utopia/dystopia from which paper has all but vanished -- only to be found in their museum. Everyone now carries an aer reader (this is essentially an upgraded cell phone) and gets every physical thing they need delivered. (It appears that Amazon's quest for world domination has succeeded in The Paper Museum.)

Lem disappears from the scene almost immediately, to be replaced by Lydia's other uncle, the puzzlingly mean and antagonistic Uncle Renald. Three child interns show up to spend their summer at the Paper Museum: Jane (who is Lydia's friend), Karl, and Florence. There follow several chapters in which the kids and Uncle Renald snipe at each other in a realistic but unentertainingly childish way. This was the part of the book that seemed directionless to me. To be sure, some exposition of the world and characters is necessary, but I wished that the book would have moved on to the real story more swiftly.

The real story, once it gets rolling, is a good one. It begins when Lydia starts snooping around. She makes discoveries, which are interesting, and fun stuff begins to happen. Of course, I can't tell you what any of the discoveries are or what the fun stuff is. You will have to read the book to find out. Once we get past the Era of Pointless Arguments, the story gets better.

To my perception, the heart of The Paper Museum was the library. The Paper Museum has several departments devoted to different paper and paper-related artifacts, but the biggest is the library, a collection of paper books. Kate S. Simpson is a librarian, and her love of books comes through loud and clear. If you, too, love books, you will recognize several of the books that play a role in the story.

Thanks to NetGalley and Union Square Kids for an advance readers' copy of The Paper Museum. To be released 20-Sep-2022.

When will books become extinct? I think we’ve kinda reached this point in some ways with our reliance on technology. But Simpson has built a world where paper is obsolete and the whole world relies on machines for everything, even to make food.

Lydia is the heroine of the story, and she lives in The Paper Museum, where every book and scrap of paper is displayed, with her Uncle Lem after her parent’s disappearance. She’s desperate to find her parents, so she files a missing persons report which gives her thirty days to find her parents or The Paper Museum and her family home will be reassigned to someone else.

Lydia was in a lot of ways an interesting heroine. She’s fascinated with all the books in the museum, and it’s interesting to hear about the books from her perspective. However, I had a hard time getting into her character. I didn’t dislike her, but I wasn’t invested in her. All the other characters were also not very engaging. The plot of the story was similar.

I didn’t dislike anything in particular, but I was not very interested in it. It didn’t hold my attention. I thought it was fascinating to learn about this sci-fi world, but I feel like it wasn’t fleshed out enough. I would have loved to learn more about how exactly things worked, but since it was told from a first person point of view, the author couldn’t explain things too much.

This is a clean story about the importance of friends and family that is perfect for middle schoolers. It’s not too long, and even though it’s dysoptain, it’s not scary at all.


I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book which I received from the publisher through Netgalley. All views expressed are only my honest opinion, a positive review was not required.

The idea of Lydia living in dystopian world where paper and books relate become precious collectible for Museum is intrigued me. Then the premise about magic is forgotten and people live with a tablet name aer reader for doing daily stuff is peak my curiosity. But pages after pages I am ended with those feeling that I am waiting something big magic reveal and just get very small explanation in the end.

I feel the idea of this book very unique and different, but need extra substances and depth. First the worldbuilding with magic system based on literature and paper is unique and very interesting but we got almost nothing explanation about it. The characters okay but unmemorable. I appreciate the raising pace in half end of this book when the mystery start unravelling. But I think we need to keep it intriguing enough from the start to make younger reader keep going.

Thank you Netgalley and Union Square Kids from Sterling Publishing to providing me with this copy. I am grateful and my thoughts are my own.

The Paper Museum by Kate S. Simpson

An ode to readers and books. I couldn’t read this middle grade fast enough and I know my younger self would have felt the same.

In a world where books and paper no longer seem to matter, the paper museum is a place of wonder. At least, it is for Lydia and her family. No one else seems to really care about it. After her parents disappearance, Lydia moves into the museum with her Uncle Lem, the curator. Lydia only wants to find her parents but after her Uncle Lem leaves on a mysterious journey she’ll have a lot more problems to deal with.

This was such a fun and magical read and I loved the ideas contained within. I can’t say much about it without spoilers but this book now holds a special place in my heart.