Tag Archive for: mystery

Monday Book Review: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein

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One of my favorite things to read is a middle grade mystery with puzzles that the reader can play along with, and Chris Grabenstein delivers just such a treat in his Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library. (And seeing how I’ve just returned from a trip to Italy where I partook of a bit of limoncello, this book seemed like the perfect choice for my next Monday book review. 😉 )

LemoncelloTitle: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library

Author: Chris Grabenstein

Genre: mystery

Age group: middle grade

Synopsis: Kyle Keeley loves playing all sorts of games, especially board games designed by his hero Luigi Lemoncello. After Mr. Lemoncello designs the new town library, Kyle wins one of the 12 coveted spots to participate in a special “library lock-in” to celebrate its opening. However, Mr. Lemoncello has created a special game for this lock-in. The kids have to solve a series of riddles and puzzles in order to get out of the library. Whoever gets out first will star in a commercial for Mr. Lemoncello’s next board game!

I really enjoyed how much the reader can play along with the puzzles in this book. To me, a mystery isn’t fun if you can’t play detective along with the main character. Author Chris Grabenstein does a nice job of making many of these games “playable” with Kyle. I also enjoyed how he integrated many popular children’s book titles into the games and into Mr. Lemoncello’s speech. Grabenstein made use of classic titles like Anne of Green Gables (you know I’d like that!) and newer books I love like When You Reach Me.

The one little thing I wish were different about the book is that I wish there were more at stake than starring in a commercial. As an author myself, I’ve read many times that you have to decide what “terrible thing” will happen to your character if he does not succeed in his goal. Otherwise, why do we care? For that reason, the beginning of the book felt a little slow to me. I didn’t know why I should care if Kyle won this game or not. When I found out that the only thing at stake was starring in a commercial, it seemed a little shallow. Perhaps, if there’d been a financial prize, and Kyle’s family needed the money to keep their house or something, then I might’ve felt a bit more invested.

Fortunately, the riddles the kids have to solve were fun enough to keep a book lover like me entertained. Also, the library that Lemoncello (or really Grabenstein) dreams up is very cool, and I’d love to visit a library like that someday.

If you (or a kid you know) loves to read and solve puzzles, I’d definitely recommend this book. There’s even a fun puzzle-within-the-puzzle for the reader to solve at the end of the story.

Monday Book Review: Saving Kabul Corner by N.H. Senzai

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Here’s the second in my reviews of juvenile mysteries for these year’s Edgar nominees!

IMG_3252Title: Saving Kabul Corner

Author: N.H. Senzai

Genre: mystery

Age group: middle grade

Synopsis: Twelve-year-old Ariana is a bit perturbed that her perfect cousin Laila, who just moved from Afghanistan to California, has honed in not only on her bedroom, but also on her best friend Mariam! Ariana dreams of the day when Laila’s father will return from his job in Afghanistan and she and her family can move into their new home where she’ll finally have her own room. But things never go as planned, and both Ariana’s and Laila’s worlds get turned upside down when a rival Afghan grocery store opens up in the same shopping plaza as Ariana’s family store. This reignites an old family feud that was long thought to be buried back in Afghanistan. When the family store, Kabul Corner, is vandalized, Ariana and her friends decide to find out who’s trying to destroy their business. Is it really the Afghan family who runs the rival store, or is somebody else out to get them?

If you’ve been around the blog for a while, you might remember that I also reviewed Shooting Kabul, N.H. Senzai’s first book (sort of a prequel to this one) two years ago. While I enjoyed that one, I think I enjoyed this second book even more–probably because it seemed, at least to me, to follow a more traditional mystery plot. There are clear suspects, clear clues, and a good old-fashioned wrap-up of whodunit at the end.

Another thing I really enjoy about N.H. Senzai’s books is that she gives us such a lovely glimpse into the true Muslim culture. I teach at a very ethnically diverse school, and it’s fun for me to see characters with names like that of some of my students: Fadi, Zayd, Naj, Nasreen. Some of my students’ families have fled Afghanistan for the same reasons as the characters in this book, so it helps me to understand what their life might be like at home as they worry about family members who may still be there or may even be helping U.S. forces in the area.

Kudos to N.H. Senzai for a fun mystery! I think I may be adding this as an option for summer reading for next year’s group of incoming sixth graders.

Monday Book Review: Fake ID by Lamar Giles

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It’s time to review another Edgar nominee, this time for best young adult mystery.

Title: Fake ID

Author: Lamar Giles

Genre: mystery

Age group: young adult

Synopsis: Teenager Nick Pearson has been living in the Witness Protection Program for years. His father, a former mob ally, is a key witness in a case against a big-time mobster–or at least, will be a key witness once the police capture the mobster. Unfortunately, Nick’s dad has problems playing by the rules; thus, Nick’s family is forced to change names and locations several times. When Nick lands in the small town of Stepton, things go wrong quickly. A student at school commits suicide, but Nick isn’t convinced it wasn’t murder. Worse yet, he fears his dad is messed up in the whole deal.

Giles provides several nice plot twists to a story that keeps getting more complicated as Nick investigates, so I can see why it’s been nominated for an Edgar. After years of reading so many mysteries, it’s a little hard to surprise me so I’ll admit that there was one plot twist that got me.

Parents may want to be forewarned that there is foul language in the book, but it didn’t seem gratuitous to me. I’m sure high school students hear similar or worse language on a daily basis. There are also brief mentions of sex and one short make-out scene. Nick certainly isn’t the perfect hero of a romance novel, but he’s a kid trying to do the right thing despite his father’s mistakes, so we root for him to succeed, and there are definitely some humorous lines in here.

One other thing I feel compelled to mention is that after the questionable suicide, one character mentions that another character says there won’t be a Catholic funeral because it was a suicide. I don’t know if Giles purposely included this erroneous idea or if he’s unaware himself. However, as a Catholic with a book about teen suicide due out in just a couple months, I thought I should clear the air. Someone who has committed suicide can have a Catholic funeral Mass. If you’d like an explanation, feel free to see this article.

 

 

Monday Book Review: Nick and Tesla’s Super-Cyborg Gadget Glove by “Science Bob” Pflugfelder and Steve Hockensmith

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The full title of this book is Nick and Tesla’s Super-Cyborg Gadget Glove: A Mystery with a Blinking, Beeping, Voice-Recording Gadget Glove You Can Build Yourself. Whew! How’s that for a title! It’s the first of my 2015 Edgar-nominated books to review.

Nick and TeslaTitle: Nick and Tesla’s Super-Cyborg Gadget Glove: A Mystery with a Blinking, Beeping, Voice-Recording Gadget Glove You Can Build Yourself

Authors: “Science Bob” Pflugfelder and Steve Hockensmith

Genre: mystery

Age group: middle grade

Summary: Twins Nick and Tesla Holt are named after the famous (although really not as famous as he should be) engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla. The eleven-year-old twins are staying with their Uncle Newt, a scientist asked to fix a brand-new interactive display of animatronic representations of famous scientists at a local museum about to have a grand re-opening. However, someone seems set on ruining the museum’s celebration. When Uncle Newt and his friend Hiroko think they’ve got everything ready, they activate the animatronic version of Nikola Tesla to give it a test run. At first, everything seems fine, but suddenly all the robotic-like figures start talking at once, and then at high speed until a beaker flies out of Louis Pasteur’s hand, Charles Darwin’s head falls off, and everyone is suddenly plunged into darkness. When the lights come back on, Uncle Newt and Hiroko work on repairing the broken robots while Nick, Tesla, and their two friends decide to investigate who is out to ruin the museum’s big night.

Super Cyborg GloveWhile Nick, Tesla, and their friends work on the mystery, they decide they need a special glove to help them. At first, the glove needs an LED light that can be activated by touching two fingers together. Later, they need to record someone talking, so they add a small recorder to the glove. As the mystery progresses, more devices get added to their super-cyborg glove. What makes this more fun is that the directions for the glove are included in the book so that kids (with the help of their parents) could actually build their own super-cyborg glove if they wanted to.

The mystery part of the book is pretty fun, too. While I may have predicted what was going to happen at times, I think the ending would surprise most young readers, and I definitely think the authors captured the voice of eleven-year-olds pretty well. (Seeing as I spend my days with eleven and twelve-year-olds, I like to think I know what they sound like!)

A fair warning to parents who don’t like adult characters to seem “stupid”: Nick and Tesla’s Uncle Newt is kind of your stereotypical “mad scientist.” He’s brilliant with his science, but lacks a bit of common sense, and he’s definitely not good at keeping an eye on his niece and nephew. They are allowed to roam the museum unsupervised because he’s too distracted fixing the museum display.

That being said, it’s really nice to see woman and girls portrayed as being not only interested in science but also very good at it. Uncle Newt’s friend Hiroko is a smart, female scientist, and Tesla is a bright young woman who makes for a strong heroine and counterpoint to her more cautious but still smart twin brother. I would recommend this book to those in grades 3-6 who like mysteries and/or are interested in science.

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