Race Case: The Lost Race Car by Misti Kenison

Jayden is watching two rather unusual figures flying at colorful kite in his own front yard. What he is not watching is his new toy rolling away! It's a red racer with #15 on its side. Suddenly Jayden notices it is missing!

Forgetting their kite in flight, Detective Fox and Goat are quickly on the case. Fox squints through his telescope and Goat goes into disguise in his dark glasses. Then they spot a car zooming through the garden. Is that the lost car?

NO. THAT POLICE CAR IS WHITE.

That can't be right.

A mighty gray motorcycle roars by. But race cars have four wheels. A cycle has only two. Detective Fox centers his attention on a toy cement mixer on the kitchen counter. Detective Goat ogles the mixer and pronounces it too weighty. A yellow school bus is too long to be a racer. A red and blue toy train travels across the bridge, but it rolls on tracks. Race cars prefer roads. Detective Goat's spyglass spots a red toy vehicle in the backyard, but the tractor is way too tall to be a racer.

Hey! WAIT! What does Jayden's big brother Jordan have it his hand? It's small, it's red, it has four wheels!! Congratulations, Detective Fox and Goat! Case closed.

Some sharp-eyed junior sleuths may well have spotted the lost race car long before the dynamic detective duo do, in Misti Kenison's The Lost Race Car: A Fox and Goat Mystery (Fox and Goat Mysteries) (Schiffer Publishing, 2018). Would-be detectives will want to add the salient qualities of various rolling toys shown in Keniston's appendix to their own detective notebooks--color, size, weight, and number of wheels are all clues to solving this case, and some junior gumshoes may have fun making up their own missing vehicle quiz, such as what's white and light? What's long and yellow and has four wheels? What has lots of cars and runs on tracks? Elementary, my dear Watson!