The Mechanical Mind of John Coggin by Elinor Teele

John can create a perfect casket.  He's learned to do it with all the right angles and produces a clean, good looking wooden casket.  He hates it.  He wants to do something else.  Anything else...

Walden Pond Press and Edelweiss gave me the opportunity to read this book for review (thank you).  It will be published April 12th.

This story has a mix of everything.  There's the mean aunt hoarding her money that John earns, his little sister, a circus, a little cuss that gets him trouble every time, a baker, a lady adventurer who's studying history, and more.  All these characters play their parts in helping John and Page, his sister, try to get away from his aunt.

Boz (the little cuss) takes them away from the aunt on a firetruck he "borrowed".  They join the circus and everything is good until John has to produce something that can be used as an act in the circus.  What he attempts to do doesn't work.  They vote them out of the circus, so they must run again.

It doesn't matter where they go, their aunt is still after them.  They're in a good place with a baker who is kind to them and then Boz brings too many accelerants too close to the new oven and accidentally starts starts a fire that makes an explosion.  The cops are after them then.

When his aunt captures him again, he jumps from the train into some river way below knowing even if it kills him it's better than being with her.

There's lots of busy adventures, John learns what he was doing wrong in his inventions, and the ending is fabulous.  This was a fun read where the good people outdo the bad and everybody lives happily ever after.  Well, maybe not his aunt, but who cares?