Case of the Purloined Eggs: April Adventure by Ron Roy

Brian sat up and rubbed his eyes. "Hey, what's this?" he asked. He held up a blue plastic egg. "It was on my pillow!"

"My egg had a note inside!" Bradley said, showing his egg.

"We all have notes!" Lucy said. "Mine says, GO WHERE A ROSE GROWS. SIGNED, THE SHADOW."

Nate crawled out of his sleeping bag. "Mine says, THERE YOU WILL FIND DIRECTIONS TO THE TREASURE. It's signed THE SHADOW, too!"

"Cool," Lucy said. "I love treasure hunts! But who's the Shadow?"

The second-grade siblings of those intrepid detectives made famous in Ron Roy's top-selling A to Z Mysteries, love a mystery, too, and when they head to the rose garden in the park downtown, they have no trouble finding the hidden plastic eggs. But one note inside tells them to find the golden eggs to claim their prize, but there are no golden eggs to be found. It's a mystery, and the young sleuths soon rise to the challenge.

A bit of traditional gumshoe legwork leads them to heir neighbor Mr. Pocket, who suggests that they concentrate on the nesting swans in the park. With that piece of information the four kids run back to the pond, where they find that the swans are not the least bit interested in letting them look for golden eggs in their nests. But like their super-sleuth siblings, these young detectives soon figure out what to do next, an investigation which also leads to an ecological adventure.

Young independent readers who are not quite ready for author Roy's popular A to Z detectives, will be glad to see his latest entry into the beginning chapter genre, Calendar Mysteries #4: April Adventure (A Stepping Stone Book(TM)), this one written in a very accessible Grade 1.8 reading level. With his illustrator John Steven Gurney's appealing illustrations, full- and half-page, throughout, this book boasts nine chapters and a real big-kid look for those just taking their first steps into reading an extended story on their own. Roy's Calendar Mysteries are a boon to the youngest beginning chapter readers with manageable vocabulary, familiar neighborhood settings, and appealing young characters who think for themselves.