Key to the Past: The Whites of Their Eyes (Benjamin Pratt and the Keepers of the School) by Andrew Clements

Robert held up his index finger. "Important tactical rule: always plan for mistakes and malfunctions--it's called redundancy."

He took another bite of cheeseburger and kept talking. "When you consider a weapon design, you also have to consider your enemy. In this case, we've got Lyman the Spyman--except he can't just hang around the school spying all day. To maintain his cover, he has to actually be the janitor. So, that's his weakness--as you already know. And really, in today's action, I was sort of copying what Ben did."

Ben nodded wisely. It was nice to have his work praised by an expert

"Okay, okay," Jill said. "Let's hear about this fake puke of yours."

A pair of elderly women in the next booth swiveled their heads and stared at Jill disapprovingly.

In the third book in the popular Keepers of the School series, The Whites of Their Eyes (Benjamin Pratt and the Keepers of the School) (Atheneum Books, 2012), with time running out, Benjamin Pratt and his friend Jill decide to risk taking on a third co-conspirator, the "brain" Robert Gerritt, to help them defeat the corporation and its undercover agent, Lyman, masquerading as the new school janitor, who plan to tear down the historic Duncan Oakes School and build a mega-theme park, Tall Ships Ahoy, on the site. Ben had uncovered a secret society of generations of students, called The Keepers of the School, sworn to protect and perpetuate the school. Now, with only three weeks before the wrecking ball destroys the historic building, the two Keepers decide to swear in Robert to help them outwit the former secret agent Lyman, now employed by the Tall Ships Ahoy Corporation to foil their efforts.

In the introductory volume of the series (see my review here) Ben and Jill have followed Duncan Oakes' cryptic messages and uncovered a codicil in his will which could possibly defeat the demolition plan, but they need more facts to use as firepower, and the search for more concealed clues is foiled by "Lyman the Spyman" who seems to always be one step ahead of them. With Robert's help, the three manage to defeat Lyman's hidden sensors and enter the school for a midnight search which uncovers a banister which, when turned, reveals a secret panel which opens into a concealed room which was evidently used as a station on the Underground Railroad.

The three Keepers hope this this historic find will help win over public opinion to preserve the Oakes School, but when the kids emerge from their hidden room, they find themselves facing a fierce guard dog which Lyman has set loose in the schools halls, and again they must outwit Lyman to make their escape with proof of their new find.

Andrew Clements' third book in the series does not disappoint middle readers in its combination of suspense, danger, and a tantalizing historical mystery with local political ramifications. Clements, a master of elementary fiction, is a fine storyteller who offers a fast-paced page turner with deeper ethical ramifications. Fans of the first book and its sequel, Fear Itself, will want to get their hands on this latest installment in the series.

The Final Solution: R.I.P. Donald Sobol

Hail and farewell to Donald J. Sobol, the creator of the character who first made it cool to be smart in school! Encyclopedia Brown, the erudite hero of Sobol's fifty-plus-year-old series, introduced millions and millions of kids to the detective mystery genre with tales all set in Idaville, U.S.A.

With memorable characters like the original tough-chick sleuth Sally Kimball and bad guy Bugs Meany and his gang the Tigers, illustrated iconically by Leonard Shortall, Sobol made it respectable to know stuff and taught generations about the fictional device of foreshadowing (clues)! Each book gave readers the short but well-written scenarios of ten hometown mysteries and gave the youthful sleuths a chance to solve the case on their own, backed up with an appendix of solutions.

Sobol's final E. B. book, Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Soccer Scheme is forthcoming in October.

Woodchuck Chuckles: The Attack of the Frozen Woodchucks by Dan Elish

Some children are asked to take out the trash. Others are asked to make their beds. Janice, Jimmy, and William had been called upon to do something noble, something important: to make the world safe from woodchucks.

And not just any woodchucks, either. When two-year-old Imogene and Jimmy Weathers' dad, a lawyer who moonlights as a wannabe children's fantasy writer, return from a walk in Central Park, they are almost speechless with a tale of giant woodchucks hatching from frozen pods and chowing down on the trees there. Jimmy and his Mom consider the whole story a product of Dad's fevered writer's creativity on hyperdrive, but when his dad is snatched by a nighttime dad-napper who leaves behind a giant whisker, Jimmy and Imogene set out to chase down the woodchucks and rescue their dad.

The NYC Police are no help, of course, but Jimmy's best friend William Howard Taft V (chubby great-great-great-great-nephew of William Howard Taft, America's fattest prez) is up for the investigation and even offers his not-quite-ready-for-prime-time golf-cart-cum-spaceship to track down the alien abductors. When William's cart fails to make orbit, however, the two are forced to turn to their freak-o-geek classmate Janice Claypoole, who has always claimed to have her own means of space travel. And indeed, the youthful author of the galaxy best-seller Light Speed and You, does--a warp-speed ship of her own construction, named The Fifth Floor, concealed, naturally, on the fifth floor of her apartment building. Jimmy is dubious, but what the hey, no one else cares about finding his father, so the three are soon exiting earth's atmosphere and on their way to Planet Grindlepick, where the cotton candy crop for the universe grows and which seems to be having its own problem with woodchucks.

The ship seemed to freeze in space.... Then the screen went completely white, and with a giant whoosh the ship thundered even faster than before.

"What happened?" William asked.

Janice smiled. "This baby does light speed."

William's eyes went wide. "Light speed? How did you pull that off?"

Janice shrugged. "I was always good at math."

A chick who can do light speed has no trouble with the minor mystery of giant woodchucks from the galaxy, and soon the space sleuths have the woodchuck caper figured out. It seems that Janice's father, quirky inventor of the mute button back on Earth, has a new discovery, Plastawood, the source material for faux trees and all wood products therefrom. But in order to makes gazillions off his new invention, he has first to get rid of all the real trees in the universe--which means (what else?) that he must create voracious woodchucks hatched from frozen pods and distribute them around the timber-producing planets in space. At least, that's his apparent business plan.

Can a trio of intrepid kids, augmented by Imogene (a.k.a. Genie), the brilliant toddler gadgeteer, overcome the evil Claypoole Empire and rescue Mr. Weathers from captivity in outer space? Well, sure. Armed with their natural resourcefulness and a dirty sweat sock to track down Jimmy's dad's DNA, the kids are on the galactic case.

Nonstop, catch-as-catch-can adventures ensue, but in the end the evil empire is brought down, not by Janice's innate grasp of astrophysics, but by little Genie's rejiggering of Jimmy's Game Boy into a remote control device which turns the evil Mr. Claypoole's woodchuck pod attack back on himself. The world is again safe for wood products, and in a clever twist, author Dan Elish has Jimmy's dad, inspired by their arcane adventures, begin a new children's adventure novel with the first line of The Attack of the Frozen Woodchucks:

As Jimmy Weathers helped his mother set the table that Saturday evening in early April, he had no idea that the fate of mankind was about to come crashing down on his shoulders.

A riotously crazy, pell-mell adventure tale with memorable characters and a no-holds-barred plot, Dan Elish's novel will appeal to middle readers who like their fantasy on the gloriously wacky side. Fans of Christopher Paul Curtis' Mr. Chickee's Funny Money and Mr. Chickee's Messy Mission in the Flint Future Detectives series will find The Attack of the Frozen Woodchucks quite to their taste.