Cupcake Crime Wave! Pete the Cat and the Missing Cupcakes by Kimberley and James Dean

PETE AND GUS WERE AS BUSY AS COULD BE.

THEY WERE GETTING READY FOR THE CUPCAKE PARTY.

The busy bakers soon have a row of ten delectable-looking decorated cupcakes lined up on the windowsill to cool.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

Gus and Pete begin cleaning up the kitchen, when...

"OH, NO! SOME OF THE CUPCAKES ARE GONE!"

There are only eight cupcakes left. 10 - 8 =? Pete the Cat calculates. Two cupcakes have been confiscated by some malefactor! Who could it be? Pete postulates Squirrel. There are sprinkles under the window and Squirrel has a thing for sprinkles. But Squirrel has witnesses. She was downtown spelling in the spelling bee!

And while Pete the Cat and Gus the Duck are dithering, two more swiftly vanish. 8 - 2 = 6!

Pete and Gus abandon party prep and go into detective mode. Outside the scene-of-the-crime sill, they detect a trace of three-toed tracks leading away from the window! Could the thief be Alligator?

But Alligator has an alibi. And while they are interrogating him, four more cupcakes are purloined!

Some fast subtraction follows: 6 - 4 = 2! Then they spot a ladder nearby, and immediately they suspect low-to-the-ground turtle.

"IT CAN'T BE ME. I WAS SWIMMING IN THE SEA!" IS TURTLE'S PLEA.

And when they turn back toward Pete's house, the truth is revealed. The last two cupcakes seem to have been stolen! 2 - 2 = 0! Could the perpetrator be Grumpy Toad?

It's some subtraction sleuthing for Pete the Cat, in his latest picture book adventure by the dynamic duo, Kimberley and James Dean's Pete the Cat and the Missing Cupcakes (Harper, 2016). Ever since that blueberry pie cooling on the windowsill disappeared in Crosby Bonsall's classic I-Can-Read mystery, The Case of the Hungry Stranger (I Can Read Level 2), the who-got-the-goodies mysteries have been popular fare for primary readers, and James Dean's optimistic Pete the Cat cuts his detective teeth on this new cupcake crime story. Kimberley Dean provides the rhyming couplets, and James Dean provides the colorful illustrations in his signature style in this already top-selling mathematical mystery for their myriad fans.

The Mystery of the Missing Maps: The Map Trap by Andrew Clements

Alton's thing for maps began before he was born.

It wasn't like there had been some kind of master plan to turn Alton Zeigler into a map nut. Lack of planning was what started it all. If Alton's mom and dad had planned better, they would have studied one of those "name your baby" books and had a name all picked out. But they hadn't done that. And therefore, as his dad was driving Alton's mom to the hospital, she pulled a coffee-stained Illinois road map from the pocket of the car door and began reading aloud from the long list of town names.

"...Alma, Alpha, Alsey...Alto Pass, Alton, Amboy--"

"Wait!" his dad said. That's it!"

"What?--Amboy! That's a terrible name for a..."

"No, no," his dad said, "Alton! Alton Ziegler!"

Alton it was, and to commemorate the naming, Alton's mom framed and hung the Illinois map over his crib. His family got in on the act, sending a rug with a U.S. map and a globed lamp of the earth to revolve over his crib.

And mappish things started to happen.

Alton's first crawl was on that rug, from Texas to Michigan. And by the time he was seven, the maps in the National Geographic magazines were his favorite reading matter. Soon Alton began to make his own maps, not just of places, but of other sorts of information. He started geo-caching in the primary grades, and eventually, his wardrobe featured nothing but map tees, and so, by sixth-grade, Alton Zeigler was known far and wide at Harper Middle School as their greatest geo-geek.

And that's when creating maps got Alton into a dilemma.

He had branched out into charting all kinds of information besides landforms. There was his map of the sizes of his classmates, done in the format of a topograpical map, from the shortest kid, Cal Virden as Virdon Valley to the tallest, Emma Wilson at five feet eight inches, as Mount Wilson. There was the map of "Mrs. Wheeling's Brain," complete with her mass of frizzy hair, and a Venn diagram of his class in the cafeteria, with circles for the nerds, jocks, nobodies, and the populars. There was even a chart of how often the principal said "um" when she made morning announcements. Alton thought they were pretty witty, but he had enough wit to realize that he'd be dead meat if his teachers and classmates got a look at them, so at school he kept them hidden behind a bookshelf near his desk.

That is, until the day when he couldn't resist showing some of his maps to Quint. Quint was smart, in the cafeteria's popular circle, and a pretty funny guy himself, and he thought those maps were a hoot. But the next time Alton reached for his folder behind the bookshelf, it was gone. He quickly determined that Quint wasn't the one who swiped the folder, but when he started finding mysterious ransom notes tucked into his books or desk, Quint realized that someone has his incriminating maps and knows just how to use them as blackmail. Surprisingly, Quint seems eager to help him figure out the whodunit, delighted to be a detective in what he calls "The Mystery of the Missing Maps." He even offered a suspect, Elena, who was watching them in the library when Alton showed Quint the maps.

And Alton knows he and Quint had better sleuth out the thief and get the maps back pronto, or he's going to be in big trouble with the principal, his teachers, and everyone in the sixth grade.

Andrew Clements' latest, The Map Trap (Atheneum Books, 2014), like his many middle grader novels, offers a main character who wants to do the right thing, whatever that is, along with solid supporting characterizations, witty dialog, and and crackling plot that leaves the real perpetrator in doubt all the way to the final pages. Author Clements amazingly turns out hit after hit, and this one is abetted by the drawings of notable artist Dan Andreason. As the New York Times punningly reports, "...this stand-alone story is off the charts."

Other killer-diller middle reader fare from Clements includes his perennial best-selling award-winner Frindle, No Talking, The Report Card, and Lunch Money.

Unlocking the Past: Nancy Clancy: Secret of the Silver Key by Jane O'Connor

"Next week, I would like each of you to bring in something from present time. Nothing big. Something that tells about what life is like today. We are going to put everything in a box."

"You mean, like a time capsule?" Lionel asked. "Ooh--and can it have a sign that says "Do not open until 2064?" Nancy added.

"Maybe in fifty years my child will go to this school and open it!" Clara said.

Grace rolled her eyes. "Clara! Do the math. In fifty years you'll be nearly sixty. Your children will be grown ups, too."

"And for Monday," Mr. Dudeny went on, "I'd like you to interview somebody who was your age a long time ago. Find out what it was like being a kid back then."

Nancy and her best friend Bree decide to interview their glamorous older friend, Mrs. DeVine, who brings over an album with photos of herself and her best friend taken in an photo booth at the state fair. Mrs. Devine tells them that she and her friend vowed to be best friends always, just like Nancy and Bree. But then, she added a little sadly, her friend moved away and they lost track of each other over the years.

Nancy can't imagine being 50 years older and not best friends with Bree!

Nancy mulled over Mr. D's words. Once the past hadn't been the past. It had been just like this very moment. The present. And in the future, this very moment would turn into the past.

And the next day, as the family hits the Saturday tag sales to find her a desk for her own room, Nancy finds herself in her own history mystery. At the first stop, she falls in love with a small rolltop desk, with cubbyholes and small drawers above the writing surface. And when they get the desk home, Nancy discovers that one of the two drawers is shorter than the one above, and in it there is a key which appears to open a keyhole in the hidden drawer behind it.

And in that secret drawer is.... another key, a fancy silver key on a chain.

A key which unlocks nothing else on the desk is a mystery, and would-be detectives Nancy and Bree gleefully have themselves a new case! As the two put their heads together to discuss strategy, pushy Grace bikes by and has to hear all about it. As usual, Grace cuts to the chase.

"So, duh! Just go back and ask whoever used to own that desk what the key is for."

Grace was right! Why hadn't they thought of that themselves? Maybe their sleuthing skills were getting rusty.

Grace invites herself along to "interrogate" the desk's former owner, and the three bike over. The former owner says the key was there when she bought it from the LaSalle's next door, who moved to Washington, D.C., years before. Disappointed, Nancy and Bree turn to leave, but Grace butts in.

"Listen, if you do find an email address or something," she said, "you could write and see if your old neighbors would let us email them."

Soon Nancy gets an email for the LaSalle's daughter Olivia, who says the key was in the desk when she got it from her Aunt Elizabeth, who also has now moved back in town.

This investigation is getting intense. Olivia takes the girls' hurried call and digs out her Aunt Elizabeth's email address in a retirement complex nearby. Elizabeth is excited about the silver key and agrees to drop by the girls' detective headquarters. And she recognizes the secret key, her silver key on a chain, like the one her best friend also wore, the one she'd locked in the drawer in Nancy's desk long ago.

But there's something else familiar to Nancy about that silver key. Noticing that Mrs. DeVine had left her photo album behind after her visit, Nancy turns to the photos of the two best friends at the fair. She pulls out her rhinestone-rimmed magnifying glass for a closer look. And in the third photo pasted on the page, Nancy then sees that both girls are holding up ... silver keys on chains around their necks!

Is her new desk's drawer itself a time capsule? Has she discovered Mrs. DeVine's best friend from the past? Is Nancy Clancy's history mystery solved?

Jane O'Connor does it again in her latest Nancy Clancy chapter book, Fancy Nancy: Nancy Clancy, Secret of the Silver Key (Harper, 21014), in which she creates an intriguing, multi-faceted mystery for her two girl sleuths, with their sometime frenemy, Grace, who, they admit, is no slouch as a sleuth. Worked seamlessly into their investigations is the working out friction with wannabe friend Grace, not to mention Nancy's deepening thoughts on the nature of time and the relationship of the past with the present and future and her usual new and fancy words. As always, artist Robin Priess Glasser's many humorous black-and-white drawings are an asset in extending the easy-reading text and revealing personalities of the characters. A first-choice for young readers just getting into the mystery novel genre, with plenty of references to Nancy Clancy's favorite girl sleuth, Nancy Drew, to move them along to middle-reader status.

There are many authors who can write good beginning mysteries, but few who can blend the primary grade social scene and curriculum, vocabulary lessons, and a growing maturity into the characters, one who can write a genuinely moving denouement as O'Connor does in this one.

Other not-to-be-missed books in this best-selling series are Nancy Clancy, Super Sleuth (Fancy Nancy), Fancy Nancy: Nancy Clancy, Secret Admirer, and Fancy Nancy: Nancy Clancy Sees the Future.

Who Killed Coach Killdare? Buzz Kill by Beth Fantaskey

Head football coach "Hollerin' Hank" Kildare was having such a massive meltdown that even from where I was standing, I could see his trademark blue vein popping in his neck and the usual flecks of spittle flying out of his mouth.

Well, maybe I couldn't see the spit, but from the way demoted, one-time quarterback Mike Price kept flinching, I was pretty sure Mike was getting a shower during the game.

As the student reporter assigned to this "bleepin'" game--and daughter of Assistant Coach Jack Ostermeyer--I should have known what had just happened on the field, but the truth was, I didn't really like sports. However, I couldn't overlook it when Coach abruptly wheeled around and, completely unprovoked, booted our school's costumed mascot Buzz the Bee right in the stinger, launching him, stumbling and flailing wildly, into my archenemy Vivienne Fitch, sending her sprawling on her butt, so everybody got a view up her flippy little "cheer" skirt.

That really should've made me laugh, but I actually kind of winced. If this ends up on youTube, Viv is going to murder Mr. Killdare and stomp a poor, innocent bee.

Now... Killdare was dead. There was no doubt about it. Old Coach Killdare was as dead as a door-nail. At least, for Millie Ostermeyer, when she stumbles onto his corpse, reposing on a piece of maintenance equipment in a dark, odoriferous storage room under the stadium. It's not a pretty sight, prompting Millie to lose her lunch indecorously all over the cleated feet of star quarterback Chase Albright when he rushes toward her screams from the field.

Not that Millicent Ostermeyer is a sports freak who pines after star players or frequents the football field and lockers. She's mostly trying to preserve her reputation as award-winning ace girl reporter for the school paper, thereby beating Vivienne Fitch, her pom-pommed rival, to the scoop of snooping out calamitous cracks in the stadium's concrete supports. Still, gagging and gasping out apologies for barfing on his feet was not exactly the teen flick cute-meet with the gorgeous Chase she would have chosen in her lamest dreams.

Who would kill Coach Killdare?  Almost anyone!  Almost everyone who knew him had a motive. Even Millie's dad, super-upright mayor and assistant coach, has had angry confrontations with him and obviously had his sights set on the job and plush office of head coach. Then there is shamed ex-quarterback Mike Price (and his parents), deprived of a potential free-ride football scholarship, the aforementioned Vivienne Fitch, whose drive to be top of the "pops" has suffered a hit along with her dignity, not to mention the anonymous but mistreated derriere of Buzz the Bee. Plus a whole generation of gym students he had studiously bullied and belittled.

But Millie soon realizes that she has stumbled upon Coach's only supporter, the distant but hunky Chase, whose mysterious senior year appearance at Honeywell High suggests a shady past. Chase admits quietly to Millie than Coach Killdare had offered him a second chance after doing time in a state "boarding school" for juvenile offenders, and that as payback he has been mowing, raking, and taking care of the Coach's dog, not to mention leading the team in a much welcomed winning season.

Despite her worries about his past, Chase does have a key to Killdare's house, and Millie snatches the chance to emulate her childhood idol, Nancy Drew, and do some sleuthing there. Chase feels duty bound to help find the Coach's killer as well, and they agree to snoop together. Millie discovers some "lady stuff" in the bathroom, which means that Coach Killdare must have had at least one other friend, a lady friend, who left him a feminine-scripted and fond note signed "BeeBee." Chase also has an "in" to Killdare's office, located in the men's locker area, and while they are searching his desk and files, they discover the very recently deceased Mike Price, bashed and dumped into the whirlpool tank.

But then someone turns in an anonymous tip to the police that Millie's dad is the murderer and the blunt instrument used is buried in their backyard, where Inspector Lohser and his detectives indeed dig up a large and heavy athletic trophy. Now this case is not just a chance to win another investigative reporting award for Millie. It's her dad, his job, and their life at stake--putting the dead in Millie's deadline for sure.

Beth Fantaskey's forthcoming, Buzz Kill (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) shows off her rare flair for serio-comic teen romance thriller mysteries, and if there is such a jaw-breaking genre, she's surely its star. After having handled vampire bridegrooms and Dr. Hyde-ish alchemy, (see her earlier Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side, Jessica Rules the Dark Side, and Jekel Loves Hyde, the author jumps into the world of high-school hunks and philosophy-club nerd girl reporters with ease. Chase and Millie find themselves comfortably drawn into detecting and then into romance as the plot progresses, and progress it does, with the surprising identity of the murderer discovered, (where else?) in the locker room. It's not your mother's high school dating novel, but if a double murder mystery can still be light and funny, with some serious back stories and two unlikely but likable sweethearts, Fantaskey's latest certainly makes the team.

Publishers Weekly agrees, awarding it a starred review, and School Library Journal calls it a "character-driven novel... with "cliffhanger chapter endings, a solid mystery with a dollop of romance."

The Missing Skeleton Mystery: Gooney Bird and All Her Charms by Lois Lowry

"Mrs. Pigeon I think I'd better make my announcement right away. Otherwise it might come as a terrible surprise!"

The kids in Mrs. Pidgeon's second grade look forward to Gooney Bird Greene's announcements. She's a girl who is full of surprising ideas for her class, and since she's wearing her special charm bracelet, the kids know this one is going to be a doozy.

But just as Gooney is clinking her bracelet, there is another surprising announcement.

The intercom speaking made a sudden buzzing sound.

"Mrs. Pidgeon? We have a guest here who says he is delivering a gift for your classroom. It looks heavy!"

"Don't freak out!" said Gooney Bird. "It's connected to what we're studying."

"HE'S BRINGING US A HUMAN BODY??" Chelsea shouted.

The mystery guest is Gooney Bird's great-uncle, a professor of anatomy, and the "gift" is a real human skeleton by the name of Napoleon Bonyparts, on loan for the month of March.

The class is abuzz. Keiko and Felicia cover their eyes, Malcolm flaps his arms excitedly, and Tyrone has a rap almost ready to perform. But Professor Oglethorpe takes over, unpacking his biological specimen, delivers a quick lecture on joints and bones, and starts a running joke about the "humorous" upper arm bone, the humerus. Barry the Brain comes up with some intelligent questions, and suddenly Gooney gets one of her ideas.

"We need to take Napoleon traveling. We have been talking about the brain. So we need to show him using his brain. Where would that be in this school?"

Mrs. Pidgeon smiled. "The library! Of course!"

And so, in the interest of educating the whole school, Napoleon spends a few days seated in the library, wearing reading glasses, and "reading" a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, to show how the brain takes in data through the senses and learns. And during the next few week, Napoleon "dines" in the cafeteria, wearing a bowtie and bib while the school learns about the digestive system and sits on the floor of the gym wearing a sweatband on his skull and holding a basketball while they study the muscles. Everyone in the school, from Principal LeRoy down to Mr. Furillo the custodian, enjoys Napoleon and his costumes--everyone, that is, except Mrs. Gooch, a grumpy parent who adamantly complains about any study of the human body, especially skeletons.

Then it is time to learn about the lungs, and Mrs. Pidgeon suggests that they let Napoleon sit outside on the steps to the playground to get some fresh air. But when the class comes back to retrieve their display later, they find that their skeleton, wearing a jaunty scarf and mittens, seems to have vanished into thin air!

Gooney Bird takes charge as detective-in-chief, and the class fans out to look for clues, and it doesn't take long for the class to sleuth out the perpetrator and the location of the purloined Napoleon Bonyparts to solve the case, in Lois Lowry's sixth in series, Gooney Bird and All Her Charms (Gooney Bird Greene) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), 2013). Like her notable predecessor, Beverly Cleary, Newbery Award-winner Lowry knows how to create believable characters and school situations with humor and insight, putting those skills to work in the curriculum-reinforcing series that follows a group of second graders through their year. Gooney Bird Greene is full of surprises and her classmates impromptu comments will keep the readers chuckling, especially those from Tyrone, who wraps up the anatomy lesson, as usual, with a rap:

"The noise you hear, is it a car or a train?
Who knows the difference?"

"Mister Brain!" calls out the class, laughing.

Watch That Spider: The Hidden Gold--A Marie-Grace Mystery by Sarah Masters Buckey

My dearest Wilhelmina,

If I am gone before you arrive, Monsieur LaPlante will give you my trunks to take home with you.

Do not doubt that I have kept the promise I made to you and your brothers.

Do you remember the riddles I used to send you? I have prepared a riddle for you. I meant to surprise you when I arrived home, but now you must solve the riddle on your own.

With love,
Pa

Marie-Grace is off on an adventure, traveling from New Orleans with her father Dr. Gardner, up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers by steamboat to visit relatives in Pennsylvania. She has promised her best friend, Cecile Rey, to write lots of letters describing everything exciting she sees. "But what if nothing exciting happens?" Grace fretted. "Oh, something will!" Cecile insisted.  But Grace hardly has time to begin her first letter before she is invited on deck to watch the boat cast off. With her father she watches the hubbub below as the crew stows the final cargo on the lower deck and the last passengers come aboard.

Grace's eyes are drawn to the figure of a girl her age in worn, wrinkled clothing, arguing with the captain. It seems that Wilhelmina, only eleven years old, orphaned by her father's death from a fever, needs to return to New Madrid, Missouri, where her grandmother lives, but can only afford deck passage on the steamer. Wilhelmina is quietly but passionately protesting that her two trunks must not be stored with the other cargo. Grace's kindly father intercedes on her behalf, and Grace offers to share her tiny stateroom with Wilhelmina while she is on board.

At first Wilhelmina says almost nothing, and Grace, who has recently lost her own mother, feels sympathy for this girl, left poor and orphaned in a strange place. But eventually Wilhelmina  confides in her, telling her that she is sure her father had concealed a fortune in Gold Rush gold in his trunks before he died, leaving only a cryptic note with the innkeeper addressed to her. Wilhelmina is sure that one of the boarding passengers, Mr. Bolt, knows something about the gold, having heard her father's delirious ravings about gold and nursery rhymes at his hotel. Then, inside Wilhelmina's old copy of Mother Goose rhymes, Grace notices one corner turned down on the page with the rhyme about Little Miss Muffet. The two girls guess that some word in that rhyme is a clue to where the gold can be found.

And then the nursery rhyme book is stolen from their stateroom, and the two girls realize that someone else is looking for a clue to the gold in that old nursery rhyme book. Can they find her father's trunk and discover where the gold is hidden inside before the thief finds it first? If they can, Wilhelmina's family will have money to stay together, and Marie-Grace knows that she will have an exciting story to tell Cecile in her first letter back to New Orleans!

Sarah Masters Buckey's The Hidden Gold: A Marie-Grace Mystery (American Girl Mysteries) (American Girl, 2012) combines plenty of historical detail within a solid girl sleuth story with much at stake beyond a satisfying case closed at the conclusion. Marie-Grace, half of the friendship story between a white doctor's daughter and Cecile, the privileged young Creole (of the gens de colour libre of old New Orleans) figures in her first mystery on a steamboat journey up the Mississippi in 1854 that offers plenty of excitement--riverboat gamblers, traveling Vaudeville magicians, an intriguing young portrait painter, and collisions with flatboats along the way. As the American Girls series always does, an appended section ("Looking Back") of notes, photos, prints, and drawings and a glossary provide historical background for this American Girl beginning chapter mystery adventure.

And while Marie-Grace is solving a mystery on the Mississippi, back in New Orleans Cecile Rey is also sleuthing out the mystery behind her aunt's missing heirloom cameo necklace in The Cameo Necklace: A Cecile Mystery (American Girl) (American Girl Mysteries). (See my 2012 review here.) Fans of this duet series will want to keep up with each of the girl's adventures until the two friends are reunited again at home, older and wiser in the ways of the world, and perhaps (we hope) joining forces to solve a new case back in old New Orleans.

The Mystery of Tupelo Landing: Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage

;

Dear Upstream Mother,

Miss Retzyl claims my vast experience in discovering where you're not helps me zero in on you. But frankly my map can't hold many more pushpins. Neither can my heart.

Eleven years is a long time to search. Drop me a line or pick up the phone. I'm on the verge of puberty.

Mo

Mo (nee Moses) LoBeau's life itself is a missing person mystery.  Washed up on a fragment of a billboard in the flood following Hurricane Amy, she  was pulled from the waters by an amnesiac man who had just crashed into a tree (hereinafter the CrashTree) and who named himself The Colonel and her Moses. Since then Mo has lived with her adoptive parents, the Colonel and Miss Lana, who operate the Cafe, the center of life in Tupelo Landing, North Carolina. A rising sixth grader, Mo devotes her spare time to trying to locate her true mother, and when all the usual investigative methods come up empty, has fallen back upon writing letters to her "Upstream Mother," and launching them into Contentnea Creek inside empty ketchup and hot sauce bottles from the Cafe.

So far, Mo's investigations have turned up clueless, but then, out of the blue, Tupelo Landing has a new mystery. Community curmudgeon Mr. Jesse has turned up dead in the fishing boat that Mo's sidekick, Dale (full name Dale Earnhardt Johnson) has "borrowed" for their clandestine fishing trip, and when Mo's sworn enemy Attila (a.k.a. Anna Celeste) testifies that she saw him with a boat down by the creek, Dale becomes the prime suspect for Detective Joe Starr from Raleigh. Mo and Dale decide that his only hope is for them to find the real murderer first and so they launch The Desperado Detective Agency (Lost Pets Found Free).

But there's a tangled web of local secrets woven around Mr. Jesse's demise among the citizens of Tupelo Landing. As Mo puts it pungently,

"That's another thing about a small town: Everybody knows everybody's schedule.  We spin around each other like planets around an invisible sun.

However invisible, that central sun is the Cafe, and when the Colonel and Miss Lana go missing, Mo puts  all her hard-won waitressing skills of observation to work detecting the real prime suspect. Mo LoBeau speaks with the authentic voice of  Harper Lee's Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, or Kate DiCamillo's Opal from Because of Winn-Dixie, a memorable character whose common sense, humor, and straight-ahead loyalty make her the sort of character you love, one you'll hate to close the book on when one mystery is solved and the other--finding her mother--suddenly seems no longer a priority.

Sheila Turnage's Three Times Lucky (Dial Books, 2012) is a wonderful novel of life and love and  friendship, and being true to yourself and those around you that fully deserves its 2013 Newbery Honor Award. In its starred review, Kirkus Reviews emphatically says, "Turnage achieves a wickedly awesome tale of an 11-year-old girl with more spirit and gumption than folks twice her age. Mo LoBeau is destined to become a standout character in children's fiction. Readers may find they never want to leave Tupelo Landing." Readers could do a lot worse than spend some time sipping iced tea at the Tupelo Landing Cafe.

Sophomore Strange: The Suburban Strange by Nathan Kotecki

"We’re a set of small black shiny beads who string around together, finding beauty the rest of the world has overlooked,” said Regine. Celia thought this was a description she should remember, but she couldn’t make sense of it. The driver continued, “The Rosary is just the name we’ve given ourselves. But to describe us, I’d say we are the cognoscenti.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Celia said.

"So you see how we are, right?" Regine said to Celia. "Some kids might give you a hard time, and some kids are gong to want to be friends with you just because you're friends with us. You decide who is worth your time"

Celia is an tall, awkward sophomore transfer student to Suburban High, inexplicably adopted because of her drawing talent in a shared summer art course with Regine, taken in as a novice member to their group, who dress in stark, sophisticated black and drive to school in three dark sedans,  which bring memories of her father's funeral instantly to Celia's mind. Attired by Regine in blacks and greys, Celia finds that membership in the Rosary gives her instant status, protecting her from the harassment that drove her from her old school.

But all is not well at Suburban High. As the fall semester begins, girls experience a dangerous series of strange mishaps at school on the day before their sixteenth birthday. The rumor mill soon turns out a theory of an evil curse which strikes in varied ways, bee stings which bring on anaphylactic shock, falls down staircases, concussions on snow walkways, choking in the cafeteria. At first Celia is not worried; her own birthday in April is far away, and the whole idea seems too preposterous to be true. Celia enjoys the Rosary's oversight, encountering dark. intriguing music, art,  music, and relishing the Rosary's weekly trips to a mysteriously sophisticated club, Diaboliques, where she enjoys the stares of Tomasi, a darkly handsome young man who watches her from across the room.

At school, Celia befriends a very different girl, her chemistry lab partner Mariette, who is everything her Rosary friends are not--bubbly, dressed in nondescript but bright clothes with flyaway reddish curls. But Mariette seems gifted, able to improvise their lab experiments with no need for timing or exact measurements, infinitely kind, but somehow surrounded by a strangely magical aura, seemingly able to tame even Mr. Sumoletso, their chem teacher known to be incredibly demanding. In fact, their whole class performs amazingly well with Mariette there while his other classes struggle to pass.

But as the year moves on, more girls suffer increasingly serious mishaps on the eve of their sixteenth birthdays, and Mariette gradually reveals to Celia that she is one of the Kind, practitioners of white magic, and that she is struggling to use her nascent powers to protect these girls against someone at the school, someone who is obviously one of the Unkind, one whose continued power requires that he obtain a dying girl's last breath. And then, despite her developing powers to foil the evil Unkind's plan, Mariette herself drowns on the eve of her birthday in the school's new swimming pool.

Celia cannot shake her memory of discovering Mariette there:

...  red hair slicked across her blue-gray forehead and cheeks, ...mouth gaped open, eyes ...closed.

Celia realizes that she knows who the murderer must be, and without Mariette's protection,, she may be the next victim.

Nathan Kotecki's just published The Suburban Strange (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) combines a story of a strange high school clique with a meta-fictional fantasy mystery. Slow paced at first, this story builds inexorably toward the final confrontation between Celia and the Unkind murderer, in a world divided between "citizens," those who live obliviously in the real world,  the Kind, the forces of good, and the Unkind, the forces of evil. Kotecki thankfully avoids peopling this familiar struggle with the usual array of faery folk, werewolves, or vampires, but even so, Celia and Mariette seem the only "real" teenagers in Kotecki's often surreal surroundings, a feature which may turn off some readers. Other young adult readers who are devotees of fantasy set within in a seemingly prosaic high school setting, may relish this cosmic struggle of good and evil, especially since the book ends with the tantalizing hint of a sequel.

X-Dog Martha: Secret Agent Dog (Martha Speaks) by Susan Meddaugh and Jamie White

UH-OH! I'd been caught red-pawed.

I fled the scene. I didn't stop running until I'd reached the chief's office. (Do two-legged spies run this much? Where's my fancy car with the windows open and the top down?) I delivered K9-001's message.

"November 29-X?" the Chief repeated.

"That's right. He said it was a code."

"It certainly is, Martha! The case is cracked." The Chief shook my paw.

"Congratulations, Martha! You saved the soup!"

Martha loves a mystery, and when she is summoned by a mysterious pair in dark suits, dark glasses, and a dark limousine, she is delighted to be told that because of her special abilities, she has been chosen by spymaster The Chief to go undercover as a guard dog in the Granny's Soup headquarters. Rumors are circulating that a nefarious band of industrial spies are plotting to get their hands on Granny's secret alphabet soup formula. Martha is on board with the force right away: after all, she's always dreamed of the glamorous life of a secret agent, and besides, she needs that soup daily to keep on talking.

On the job as K9-002, Martha is disappointed that the role doesn't come with a tuxedo, dark glasses, and toilet water martinis, but she willingly agrees to work with the force's K9-001, guard dog Ruff, a rugged Rottweiler already in place at the factory. On her first night of surveillance, Martha, playing a friendly nighttime watchdog, observes the janitor picking the lock to Granny's office, where the secret formula is kept safe in the, um, safe, to which only Granny herself knows the combination. Certain that she has uncovered the undercover agent, Martha and Ruff take the news to Granny, and watch as she rushes to open the safe and make sure her formula is still there.

It is, and when Ruff tells Martha a secret code to capture the crook (the bilingual Martha speaks dog, remember?), she rushes to report it to The Chief. Mission accomplished. Case closed, thanks to souper-dog Martha, she thinks.

But no. Martha soon learns that The Chief was an impostor who played upon her desire to be a secret agent. Ruff, Agent K9-001, was actually part of the mastermind's plot. He observed the combination Granny's safe (which Martha's owner Helen quickly decodes as 11-29-10) and used Martha's ability to translate it into human talk to get it to The Chief, who then knew all he needed to rip off the recipe and end Granny's Soup's preeminence as Numero Uno in the soup biz.

Martha mopes for a minute or two, but then decides it's up to her to save Granny's Soup and keep herself in place as the world's only talking dog, even if it requires really going undercover, disguising herself as a pink poodle and infiltrating The Chief's operation. But this time, it's not Martha's linguistic skills or becoming a master of disguise that save the day--it's her good old doggy sense of smell that finally uncovers the master criminal and saves the soup.

In their forth-coming-in-February beginning chapter entry, Martha Speaks: Secret Agent Dog (Chapter Book) (Houghton Mifflin, 2012), Susan Meddaugh and collaborator Jamie White put their mystery-solving mutt through her paces in a comic little volume in which Martha again cur-tails the crooks and saves the world for talking dogs. Fans of the hit PBS show and Meddaugh's series of picture books and I-Can-Read Martha Speaks stories will love Martha as souper-spy, and the appended glossary and secret agent activities will undercover additional vocabulary enrichment opportunities as they create their own secret code messages and become "masters of disguise."

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?

Cat-astrophe Averted: Trapped by Peg Kehret

In her latest in the Pete the Cat mysteries, titled Trapped, Pete, the rotund but erudite cat who is one of literature's super feline sleuths, takes the lead in hunting down an illegal fur trapper and nearly becomes a pelt himself.

While hiking near home, friends Alex, Mary, and Rocky discover an illegal leghold trap, baited and waiting for something or someone to fall prey to its cruel jaws. Hurrying back to report the trap to Alex's animal-rescuing grandmother, the kids see a large hog fall off a beat-up truck careening down the mountain. When the animal rescue team takes the animal to a nearby vet, a local TV news reporter runs a human interest story on the evening news, and the kids enjoy a moment of fame.

But when the kids' families pitch in to build a pen for the pig, named "Piccolo" by the three rescuers, the scruffy truck driver reappears and, asserting ownership, tries to take the hog away. While the belligerent man argues with the boy's parents, Pete the cat is enticed into the old black truck by the appealing aroma of a sandwich, where he discovers a box of rabbit and fox pelts and an invoice all ready to close the deal with an illegal trader. Acting fast, Pete chews off one paw from a rabbit pelt and hides it with the invoice near the house. However, the truck's owner spots Pete inside his truck and vows to himself to kill the cat if he gets the chance.

Pete is unable to coax Alex to follow him to the concealed evidence, and by night the trapper returns with tools to unlock the pen. Again attracted by the smell of fast food, Pete follows his nose into the truck and is captured by the angry man, who vows to shoot him when he gets him back in the woods.

In her usual fast-paced style, Peg Kehret crafts the rising action of this novel into a suspenseful ending. Pete fights for his life when the trapper drags him out to shoot him and in the struggle the man shoots himself in the leg. The man roars down the mountain for medical help, where a suspicious emergency room doctor spooks the trapper with his questions about the wound. Meanwhile, Alex and his father head up the mountain for a midnight search for Pete. Tension rises as Alex's father breaks a leg in the dark woods. Going for help, Alex is almost caught by the trapper on the way home to his squatter's trailer in the mountains. Of course, at the climax of the story, it is Pete the Cat's hidden evidence which finally brings the crook to justice, proving, as always, that cats rule, at least in the mystery cat-egory!

Kehret uses Pete's voice, in italics throughout the text, to inject Pete's advice on sleuthing into the story, not to mention his ruminations on his studies of the dictionary for new words beginning with c-a-t, including his current favorites catapult and caterwaul. Other Pete the Cat books by Peg and Pete are The Stranger Next Door and Spy Cat.

For middle-reader mystery, adventure, and suspense fans Peg Kehret is the go-to gal and Pete is the can-do cat.

Another Teen Girl Sleuth--Sherlock's Little Sister: The Enola Holmes Mysteries by Nancy Springer

Nancy Springer, author of the previously reviewed and admirable Rowan Hood series about the adventures of Robin Hood's daughter, has embarked on a new series about a famous fictional character's relative, the Enola Holmes Mysteries. For Springer, a two-time Edgar Award winner, the sister of Sherlock Holmes is a natural subject, a Victorian girl endowed with a drive for intellectual and personal independence who shares her famous brother's powers of observation and reason.

Enola, by her very name, which spelled backward is "alone," is no stranger to her mother's penchant for ciphers and hidden meanings, especially of the botanical sort, but when her mother suddenly disappears on her fourteenth birthday, Enola feels that the birthday gifts left behind for her contain the secret of her mother's whereabouts. Her much-older brothers, Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes, are, however, clueless about the disappearance until an audit of the manor's accounts shows that their mother has been embezzling funds for years, enough to provide herself with considerable "mad money" far from the restraints of Victorian widowhood.

For Enola the brothers have a safe plan for their little-known young sister--into some good stout corsetry with her and off to a reputable boarding school where she can become a proper young lady suitable for a propitious marriage as soon as possible. Enola deciphers enough of her mother's cryptic gifts to locate a goodly sum of money left behind for her and takes it on the lam as soon as she is out of her brothers' sight.

Traveling by bicycle and railway and disguised in widow's weeds, Enola conceals her money and changes of clothing inside the "bust enhancers," "hip regulators," and "dress improvers" built into Victoria female garb. Almost by accident, Enola becomes involved in the search for a kidnapped twelve-year-old marquess, presumably abducted from his estate, and in a string of chases, narrow escapes, and near death experiences at the hands of several Dickensian villains, Enola keeps the action going as she puts together the clues to the identify of the mendacious kidnappers and, incidentally, the way to trace her mother's path to personal freedom. Escaping the Victorian trap to which her brothers' good intentions will lead, Enola disguises herself again and sets herself up in business as the go-between for her alter ego, Leslie T. Ragostin, Scientific Perditorian, finder of lost objects and lost persons.

Enola Holmes' engaging adventures continue in The Case of the Left-Handed Lady and the forthcoming (January 31, 2008) The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets. With an engaging teen girl sleuth in the best tradition of Nancy Drew, et al, a fresh historical setting, and the proper literary lineage, this series looks like more than a bit of all right.

Beginning-to-Read Mysteries: Minnie and Moo: The Case of the Missing Jelly Donut by Denys Cazet

For mystery-loving kids too young for the Nancy Drew or even for beginning chapter mysteries such as the Cam Jansen series (see my previous posts under search term Bridging the Gap) there are plenty of mysteries in the beginning reader genre.

Take Denys Cazet's Minnie and Moo, for example. The two laid-back bovines bumble into detecting when Minnie declares her jelly donut missing.

"I see a crime," said Moo. "Your jelly donut was stolen!"

"Stolen!" said Minnie. "Who would steal a jelly donut?"

"Evil knows no bounds!' said Moo.

When Moo detects a blue feather at the scene of the purported crime, she leads poor Minnie into undercover surveillance of the nearest birds, to be found in the farm's chicken coop. Disguised with funnels for beaks and rubber gloves for combs, the two sneak into the chicken house where they interrogate Elvis the Rooster and a would-be chicken thief in the form of a fox.

The investigation comes to an, er, dead end when Moo detects the missing donut stuck on Minnie's rear, where it's been since she sat down to eat it.

"The Case of the Missing Donut is closed," said Moo.

From crime to clues, undercover to interrogation, false clues to solution, Minnie and Moo wrap up the case in 48 illustrated pages and 1154 words at Accelerated Reader level 2.2--with chuckles to spare.

For another mystery lite, try Minnie and Moo Meet Frankenswine.

Beginning-to-Read Books: Mystery Fiction-The High-Rise Private Eyes series by Cynthia Rylant

For early independent readers, the mystery format is perfect for pulling the reader along through the early pages. Mysteries create suspense, the "then what happens?" response in the reader, which keeps interest high. Character development is uncomplicated, secondary to plot, with sleuths and malefactors playing predictable roles, and the "ah ha!" moment which occurs when the mystery is solved leaves the reader with a sense of satisfaction.

All of which is to say that the mystery genre is ideal for early readers. Versatile Newbery winner Cynthia Rylant has taken advantage of the form in her eight-title series The High-Rise Private Eyes, illustrated by G. Brian Karas. The urban detectives are Bunny Brown, the brains of the duo, and Jack Jones, the snoop and leg man. The cases take place in a city setting, with neighborhood friends, bus drivers, and shopkeepers figuring in the plots.

In The Case of the Troublesome Turtle, for example, the call for private eyes comes when Mr. Paris, local toy store owner, reports the recurrent theft of green and yellow balloons tied to the store front each day. Bunny carefully notes the color of the balloons and the fact that they are only stolen on Fridays in the fall. From these clues he deducts that a student whose school colors match the balloons is "borrowing" them to take to his Friday night football games.

Going undercover, complete with green and yellow turtle caps and green and yellow pom-poms, the High Rise Private Eyes quickly locate the perpetrator with the missing balloons. Gently they pass a note in a bag of popcorn to the young suspect and watch with satisfaction as he guiltily returns the balloons to the toy store after the game.

The High Rise Private Eyes books are well-written, within controlled vocabulary (Accelerated Reader grade levels 2.3-2.5), and provide an easy step for young readers into the mystery genre.