As a multiethnic detective, Lark’s authentic success at sleuthing ensures her a place at the chapter-book table.
Someone is playing pranks on the community theater’s rehearsals of Alice in Wonderland. The Ba twins spring into action to solve this mystery before the play is shut down.
The third title in the Lark Ba Detective series begins at play rehearsals, where suspicious problems are showing up every day. The confusion and resultant delay are jeopardizing the entire play, causing everyone to be on edge. Both Lark and Connor have parts to rehearse, but they would rather find out who has removed the buttons from the costumes and taken the light bulbs from the makeup vanities. Their mixed-race family (Korean and Kenyan) is reintroduced but takes a back seat to the investigation. Lark’s personality, however, is full of curiosity and determination, leading readers down the rabbit hole of clues. Like any good mystery, the book offers a list of suspects, red herrings, organized clues, and a moment of truth. The plot and pacing slowly build through the rehearsals just as the production nears showtime. This realistic story involves finding someone caught in a difficult situation and the hard decision to tell someone in charge. It wasn’t a high crime, like stealing diamonds. But it also wasn’t an accident, like losing a key. When friends and family are involved, solving mysteries can be complicated.
As a multiethnic detective, Lark’s authentic success at sleuthing ensures her a place at the chapter-book table. (Mystery. 6-9)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4598-1715-9
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A new chapter-book adventure series opens with a whimper.
The mystery of missing class pets: Is something nefarious afoot?
Second grader Milton Worthy feeds the class ferret, Noah, before class begins and then doesn’t close the cage securely. When Noah escapes, that’s when things get odd. Mrs. Baltman sends them out for an unscheduled early recess, and when they return, she is gone. In her place is a substitute: Milton’s mother. Mrs. Worthy doesn’t behave like a normal sub, either. She sends some students on a ferret hunt while others are ordered to seek blueprints of the school. While the class is on yet another unscheduled recess, Milton hides to spy on his mother and discovers her great secret. His mother is a helmet-wearing secret agent sent from the Society of Substitutes to thwart Noah, an evil genius who intends to teleport everyone to Evil Pet Island. A distracting overuse of ellipses and a disjointed narrative are bound to make this a challenge for readers transitioning to chapter books; milestones appear at the end of each chapter, but use of devices such as questions or comments to boost reader engagement is inconsistent. A mix of prose with speech bubbles in the cartoon illustrations may appeal to readers comfortable with comics. Diversity is conveyed primarily through the illustrations, buttressed by naming convention; Mrs. Baltman, Milton’s mother, and Milton all present White, though the class as a whole appears more diverse.
A new chapter-book adventure series opens with a whimper. (prompts) (Adventure. 7-8)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-290929-9
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
Maybe the real treasure is the friends they make along the way.
An 8-year-old’s summer gets puzzling when she’s named in her neighbor’s will.
Marly, whose best friend recently moved out of town, didn’t even know nice Mr. Summerling had even died, and she certainly doesn’t expect to be called for the reading of his will. She had liked the old man, who wandered around town with a metal detector collecting junk, but “he was next-door-neighbor nice, not give-you-something-when-I-die nice.” At the will reading, Marly meets her classmates Isla and Sai—and the three of them receive the strangest bequest. Mr. Summerling has left the three of them a treasure, which they can have if they solve a series of puzzles. The three kids barely know one another, but they gamely work together on the clues, each of which is depicted as if a facsimile in Budgen’s illustrations. (Each has one component a reader might be able to solve and another only the characters can decipher.) The trio’s friendship builds slowly, but they solve well together, and they’re friendly kids. Marly, who wears an eye patch for her amblyopia, is startled to learn that Isla wore one herself when she was younger. Both girls are White; Sai is of Indian descent. Both a fun, readable introduction to the process of cracking anagrams and pigpen ciphers and a friendship-oriented chapter book.
Maybe the real treasure is the friends they make along the way. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-09483-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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