Tag Archives: mystery

Follow the Clues: A Review of A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

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A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall
Jasmine Warga
HarperCollins Childrens
Age 8-12
September 10, 2024

Stolen art, a floating girl, and a mystery-solving turtle make for a quirky and suspenseful whodunit. Introverted and outcast, Rami spends more time than he’d like at the Penelope L. Brooks Museum where his mom oversees the cleaning crew. When a painting is stolen from the Cherry Hall gallery, and he and his mom become suspects, Rami begins seeing a ghost girl hovering in that same gallery. And she looks an awful lot like the girl in the missing painting. With the help of a Veda, a clever classmate and aspiring detective, and an observant turtle named Agatha, he will unravel the story of the girl, the painting, and the theft at the Penelope.

In a story about the importance of being seen, Jasmine Warga explores the connection between art, understanding, and truth. As a child of Lebanese immigrants, Rami is an outcast at school, and too timid to make trouble. Veda, however, is a bold and quirky personality, willing to challenge him to be daring in an attempt to solve the mystery. Their tentative new friendship is drawn with thoughtful attentions to the changeable emotions and growing pains of middle school. Themes of friendship and the desire to be seen (by Rami and Veda, by the girl, and by Agatha) provide subtlety to balance the heavier aspects of loneliness and the immigrant experience. This gentle, yet thrilling early elementary school mystery combines brief chapters, a fast pace, and multiple narrators to appeal to a young audience without being entirely childish. Warga breaks the fourth wall in chapters narrated by Agatha to add context, and a touch of magical realism, for young readers. The best combination of a warm-hearted friendship and clue-laced mystery.

Elementary!: A review of The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall

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The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall
Ali Standish
Harper Collins Children’s Books
Age 8-12
Available September 12, 2023

In a middle-grade twist on the Sherlock Holmes stories, a brilliant young Arthur Conan Doyle accepts a full scholarship to a mysterious school for exceptional students. In the hopes of providing a better life for his family, Arthur devotes himself to school, including the friendships, mysteries, and mayhem that one would expect of a 19th century English boarding school—eccentric students and professors, secret societies, magical clocks, and even a baby dinosaur. But when it comes time to submit to the questionable ethics of the secret society, and their promises of wealth and power, or do the right thing at the possible expense of his future, Arthur shows integrity to the end.

Standish borrows liberally from the Holmes novels with characters, like Dr. Watson, Jamie Moriarty, and Sherlock Holmes himself, named for many of the original Doyle’s most famous characters. Arthur himself is drawn as one would imagine a young Sherlock. These details, however, may be lost on young readers. The swiftly plotted and intricately detailed mystery can stand alone though, using its quirky characters and darkly atmospheric setting to draw the reader into its world and to rooting for the cast of diverse and well-crafted characters. Themes of friendship, integrity, and problem-solving run heavily through the novel and help to ground some of the more outlandish plot devices, like time travel and dinosaur hatching. And with a parting “the game is afoot” (p. 310), Standish sets the stage for a series of future adventures that junior sleuths will be sure to love.