THE PUZZLING WORLD OF WINSTON BREEN

For her tenth birthday, puzzle enthusiast Winston Breen gave his little sister Katie a decorative box with a secret compartment containing four curious strips of wood with numbers and letters. Their efforts to solve this mystery lead the two into a treasure hunt requiring them to cooperate with the local librarian and two unsavory strangers, under the supervision of policemen, an attractive journalist and Winston’s helpful junior-high friends. The puzzle’s creator, like Winston’s father, wants siblings to share. Although Katie inexplicably is not a part of Winston’s first meeting with the treasure hunters, and is consistently seen as a bit young for the action (which may annoy some readers), she plays an important part in the solution of one of the more complicated puzzles that make up the plot. Along the way, the author includes a number of relatively simple word and number games, some old and some new, for readers to solve. (The answers are in the back.) Both the children and the adults do learn to cooperate, an obvious message but one puzzle-loving readers may not mind. (Fiction. 10-14)