Fake or Phantom? The Pinstripe Ghost (Ballpark Mysteries) by David A. Kelly

Mike drummed his fingers on the side of his chair. He liked action more than talk, and press conferences were all talk and no action. But at least it was baseball talk.

"That's it for today," he said. "Except for one thing. The famous author Mr. Robert Williams will be here all weekend near the main entrance, signing copies of his new book, Ghosts in the Ballpark: A History of Haunted Baseball Stadiums and Supernatural Superstars."

"What about the ghost of Babe Ruth?" Kate's mom asked. "Some people are saying that the stadium is haunted," she added, "because the original Yankee Stadium where Ruth played was torn down. ... Some workers have heard strange noises."

Mike and Kate suddenly come to full attention. In New York for a series between the Yankees and the Mariners with Kate's reporter mom, the cousins can't resist a double challenge--a baseball mystery and tracking the ghost of the Yankees' most famous player. As soon as the stands come to life for the first game, they begin their sleuthing, beginning with the strange noises and rush of cold air near Bud's Hot Dog Stand. And while Mike takes time off from detecting to try out the hot dogs, it happens:

There was a rush of cool air. Kate and Mike felt the hair on their arms tingle.

"Here it comes," Bud said. "The ghost of Babe Ruth is in the house!"

KRRRRTT, SWWWWSSSSH, KRRRRTT.

Above them--or somewhere behind the stand--they heard muffled scraping and rustling sounds. The sounds got louder, and then they got softer.

Kate and Mike can't deny what they've heard or felt, but being a detective means to question everything and look for physical evidence, and the case is on!

Exploring the service tunnels under the stadium takes them to the outfield stands and to the Monument Park, where Mike spots a strangely familiar figure:

It was an older man in a Yankee uniform. Mike noticed how old and worn the uniform looked.

The man stared at the Yankees dugout. Without a word, he tipped his baseball hat toward the field.

"Did you see that?" he asked Kate.

"See what?" Kate was in front of the big brass plaque dedicated to Lou Gehrig.

"The guy who was just here." Mike said. "He was wearing an old-fashioned Yankee uniform."

Kate is skeptical, but Mike is convinced that he has caught a glimpse of the ghost of Babe Ruth. Still the kids continue their search for clues, checking out the storage closet along the service halls. One is surprisingly unlocked, and the kids notice a trail of dirt and mulch between the air conditioning vent and the doorway. Mike remembers seeing the same kind of dirt on the otherwise spotless floor around Bud's Hot Dogs. When Kate sees a group of teenagers led by a curly-haired redhead evicted for sneaking into the stadium, she begins to put together the evidence.

Author David A. Kelly's second book in the Baseball Mysteries offers plenty of distracting clues and possibilities for the presentiments of the "ghost." Bud the hot-dog man is profiting from the curious traffic around his stand, and author Williams, who obviously wants to fire interest in his book, is unusually stern when he appears with a box of his books and orders the kids out of the service area and back into the stands with a gruff command to leave the mystery to grownups. But of course, our baseball detectives are not deterred in this latest, Ballpark Mysteries #2: The Pinstripe Ghost (A Stepping Stone Book(TM)) (Random House, 2011). With plenty of false leads, real clues to put together, a bit of baseball play action on the field for sports fans, and a appendix "Stadium Notes: Yankee Stadium" for baseball trivia lovers, this newest entry has much to offer to the beginning chapter book reader.

And author Kelly wisely leaves one mystery still unsolved: Who was that enigmatic figure in faded Yankee pinstripes?

Pie Thief: The Case of the July 4th Jinx (Milo & Jazz Mysteries) by Lewis B. Montgomery

Milo asked Jazz, "Do you think the fair is jinxed?"

"I don't believe in jinxes," Jazz said firmly

"Then how come so many things are going wrong? Animals getting loose, Uncle Sam losing air, hot peppers in the fireworks box... and now this."

"Any of those things could have been an accident." Jazz pointed out.

"Yeah," Milo said, "but that's a lot of accidents."

But when the stage music CD of "Viola's Violets" cued up for Viola Pritchett's School of Dance turns out to be a heavy metal song, "YOU'RE IN THE JUNGLE BABY!," the little purple-flower-costumed girls start to gyrate and leap around the stage, and Miss Pritchett almost has a conniption. Even the rational Milo is beginning to believe the July 4th Fair has been jinxed, but Jinx points out some more reasonable suspects, the Zoo Crew, a group of rough, tough pranksters who just happen to hanging around the scene of all these disasters.

But then another scene of mayhem ensues. Screaming kids are climbing in panic out of the kiddy plastic ball pit, and a little girl admits to hiding a five-foot rubber snake beneath the balls. And, she says, a big boy told her to do it. But she cannot identify any of the Zoo Crew as the culprit.

Finally someone steals champion baker Mrs. Smalley's beautiful lemon meringue pie just before the judging, and it looks like there's no way to solve the case before the July 4th Fair becomes a total disaster!

But then Milo gets the next installment in his sleuthing lessons in the mail from Dash Marlowe, teacher of the Secrets of A Super Sleuth. Dash Marlowe's directions for disguise, role-playing, and infiltration of suspect gangs gives Milo an idea how to get inside the Zoo Crew to gather evidence. Will his undercover work prove that the big, tough kids are indeed the dastardly spoilers of the town's holiday fun? Or is there a real perpetrator hiding in plain view?

Mystery books are sure-fire best-sellers with book lovers and library readers of all ages, and kids are no different, especially those just beginning to tackle chapter fiction. Lewis B. Montgomery's latest The Case of the July 4th Jinx (Milo and Jazz Mysteries) (Kane Press, 2010), the fifth in this popular series, has plenty of clues, blind alleys, and suspects to keep young readers turning the pages through the ten short chapters. Many illustrations by Amy Wummer break up the text to make reading easier, and an appendix of "Super Sleuthing Strategies" gives young detective wannabes tips, brain stretchers to puzzle over, mini-cases, and observation exercises for some follow-up fun.

Hudson Valley Halloween: Sleepy Hollow Sleepover by Ron Roy

Dink got up and walked over to the window. It had grown dark outside.

Then he heard it again, a thudding noise. Then he saw a light among the dark trees. "Guys, come here!" he said.

A horse raced out of the trees, past the cabin window. A rider carrying a jack-o'-lantern sat on the horse's back. The horse stopped, and the rider held the jack-o'-lantern high in the air.

Dink noticed the flowing cloak, just like on the rider he'd seen in the bank window. Only this one wasn't fake. This was a real man and a real horse.

Then Dink looked above the man's shoulders. There was nothing there!

"IT'S THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN!" Ruth Rose screamed.

Dink's dad is treating Josh, Ruth Rose, and Dink to a Halloween sleepover in Tarrytown, the setting of Washington Irving's classic tale of the Headless Horseman. First it's ice cream cones in the village, where the kids see the mechanical headless horseman in action in the local bank window and watch an armored car deliver sacks of money under armed guard to the bank.

Then it's off to unpack at their cabin, the Haunted House, where skeletons pop from the bureau and Dink spots the mysterious headless rider galloping past. Next the kids join other visiting kids for the "Haunted Hayride" sponsored by the Tarrytown Police Department. Their cloaked driver suddenly drops his pumpkin head among them and soon picks up a costumed zombie rising from the graveyard as they wend their way to the big bonfire and cookout in the woods. It's all frightfully fun, until, as Dink accidentally rolls his pumpkin bowling ball into the woods, he catches a glimpse of two suspicious masked men hanging out around the parked hay wagons.

But just then the kids are called to a campfire marshmallow session, and something happens that is outside the Police Department's Halloween script. Their hay wagons suddenly burst into flames and burn to the ground as the horrified horses dash away into the woods. Then the officers discover that their police cruisers' tires have been slashed. The kids and the Tarrytown police are marooned in the woods.

Finally back in town the next day, the kids learn that the bank where they watched the mechanical horseman has been robbed, leaving Bonnie the teller tied up in the floor. Then, as the novelty company truck comes to pick up their mechanical rider from the window display, Dink has a Sherlock Holmes moment and quickly climbs into the back of the truck where the figure has been loaded.

Under the tarp covering the load, Dink discovers bags of money hidden inside the horse's control panel. Josh and Ruth Rose crawl in to see what's up, and while Dink is silently showing them the stash under the tarp, the two men come back and climb into their truck. The three kids are trapped and on their way who knows where with two bank robbers inside the cab in front of them. Ruth Rose pulls out her trusty cell phone to call Dink's dad for help, but there's no signal! How can the three signal for help from the speeding truck?

Ron Roy may have covered the 26 letters of the alphabet already, but he's back in fine fettle in this Super Editon of his mega-popular A to Z Mysteries beginning chapter mysteries. A to Z Mysteries Super Edition #4: Sleepy Hollow Sleepover (A Stepping Stone Book(TM)) offers a well-delineated trio of resourceful young gumshoes, each with his or her own contributions to the sleuthing, plenty of suspense, and a superbly detailed and foreshadowed mystery which tests the youthful reader's own detecting skills along the way. There is even an "I-Spy" mystery coded message to be solved hidden within the fine full-page illustrations contributed by John Steven Gurney.

Pair this one with Ron Roy's earlier The Zombie Zone (A to Z Mysteries), set evocatively in the Louisiana bayou country, for a delightful duo of Halloween-time treats.

The Big War : I'm Still Scared by Tomie dePaola (Beginning Chapter Books)

Tomie dePaola is best known for his picture books, especially his Caldecott Honor classic Strega Nona. Over the past few years, he has taken on the beginning chapter genre with his 26 Fairmont Avenue series (Accelerated Reader level 3.9-4.3), a group of personal memoirs of his primary school years in Meriden, Connecticut, during the early 1940's. The first book, 26 Fairmont Avenue, was a Newbery Honor book.

Two of these books deal with the home front during the beginning of World War II. Things Will NEVER Be the Same takes seven-year-old Tommy dePaola through the first happy months of his year in second grade and ends on December 7, 1941, with the shocked family trying to deal with the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese aircraft.

I'm Still Scared begins on December 8 as Tommy and his sister arrive at school to see grownups huddling and talking in low tones in the halls. School is dismissed early so that children may hear President Roosevelt's speech (now known as the "Day of Infamy" speech) with their families at home. Although Christmas lights are still allowed and gifts are being wrapped for the tree, life for Tommy's family is changing. Children crouch under stairways and in the school basement for their first air raid drill. Mrs. dePaola sews and hangs blackout curtains on their window and Mr. dePaola takes a second job in a defense plant. Tommy has his first experience with wartime prejudice as kids taunt him about his Italian last name and say he's the enemy. While Tommy is frightened by these genuinely disturbing events, his parents carefully explain why these things are occurring, and he is reassured that his family will meet the coming events together.

This book is followed by a new sequel, Why?: A 26 Fairmont Avenue Book, which continues dePaola's autobiographical account of America at war, deals with food rationing and the loss of a relative at war from the honest viewpoint of a young boy. This is a laudable beginning chapter series, and the three titles which deal with the war years will provide modern children with a reassuring look at how Americans met the challenges of a wartime past and help them deal with the threats of international conflict in their own lives.