Skip to main content

Five Faves: Mysteries for Younger

By
October is a great time to read a mystery! These picture book mysteries are the perfect way to introduce young readers to the genre, just in time for spooky season.

Written by Josh Funk
Illustrated by Brendan Kearney
New York: Union Square Kids, 2022. Picture Book.

Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast wake up one day to find that the Great Light in the refrigerator is missing! As they trace the light to Las Veggies, Pancake and French Toast must enlist all their friends to retrieve the bulb from Caper and his vegetable henchmen!

Written Josh Crute
Illustrated by Jenn Harney
Salem, MA: Page Street Kids, 2021. Picture Book.

When Deer wakes up and realizes that one of his antlers has been stolen and replaced with a tennis racquet, he panics! Racing around to his friends in the woods, they each realize in turn that they have all been hornswoggled, bamboozled, skunked! Wacky words are used and defined as the animals try to solve the mystery of the missing items. 

Written by Eddie Muller and Jessica Schmidt
Illustrated by Forrest Burdett
Philadelphia, PA: Running Press Kids, 2023. Picture Book.

When hard-boiled private investigator Kitty Feral's partner Mitch the Mutt goes missing, the cat faces dead end after dead end. Deciding to take on a second, potentially connected case of a missing candy shipment, Kitty interrogates the "usual suspects" to get to the bottom of the disappearances and save Mitch and the candy from the bandits. The case gives young readers an introduction to noir and detective fiction tropes and vocabulary, and an afterword gives more information on the noir genre's origins.

By Albert Arrayás
Boisbriand, Quebec: CrackBoom! Books, 2021. Picture Book.

Chickens are beloved and revered in Chickentown, and every year the hens compete for the Golden Feather award for the best hen of the year. A few days before the competition, hens start disappearing mysteriously, with a set of clues pointing to the culprit. The local witch and her hen set out to find the kidnapper, though it may not be who you expect!

By Christie Matheson
Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2024. Picture Book.

In this fall mystery, when a group of mice goes missing, the squirrels in the forest set out to figure out what happened to them! As each successive group of animals appears and is investigated, they are introduced with the collective noun for that animal.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The New Girl

By
The New Girl By Cassandra Calin New York: Graphix, 2024. Comic. 261 pages. 12-year-old Lia and her family have just moved from Romania to Montreal, and she's doing her best to keep up with the changes. But, she's homesick. She misses the rest of her family, her friends, and her favorite Romanian treats. She doesn't speak French and her English is shaky, which makes it hard to make friends, even in her international immersion class. And she's dealing with super painful menstrual cramps every month. But before long, Lia starts to hit her stride. She befriends the other bilingual girls in her class, she gets a spot as the artist for her school's magazine, and even has a new crush -- Julien. Though she may be the new girl, Lia is starting to fit in. This slice of life graphic novel is an adorable choice for middle grade readers and young teens. Lia is a likable protagonist and readers will have little difficulty relating to her adjustment to school. The text speaks to a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Five Favorite Aunt and Uncle Books

By
  Aunt and Uncle Day I discovered a new holiday. Apparently, July 26th is National Aunt and Uncle Day! In order to celebrate this day, I am sharing my five favorite middle grade books that have stellar aunts and uncles. Now, due to a lot of various circumstances, these books have a lot of hard things (death of a parent, parental neglect, and one case of good parents sending their child off to visit an uncle during summer vacation). So, be aware that these titles not only showcase some amazing aunts and uncles, but they also open the door to talk about hard topics.  Closer to Nowhere  By Ellen Hopkins  Putnam’s Sons, 2020.  This book is actually told from two different points of view—Hannah and Cal’s; however, the two protagonists are cousins. Cal comes to live with Hannah’s family and Hannah’s mom—Cal’s aunt—becomes Cal’s support and champion. Cal’s mom died and his dad is in prison. Cal is in a family foster care situation and doesn’t feel like he belongs. Hann...
Post a Comment
Read more