Edgar Allan's Official Crime Investigation Notebook

by Mary Amato

Overview

First Slurpy the goldfish gets fishnapped. Then other things begin to disappear from Ms. Herschel's classroom. Odder still, the culprit leaves poetry behind. Edgar intends to find the criminal responsible with the help of his notebook. However, he's going to have to beat his rivals, form careful alliances, and make sense of a few suprising discoveries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823426775
Publisher:	Holiday House
Publication date:	05/08/2012
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	176
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	6 - 9 Years

About the Author

Mary Amato is an award-winning children's book author, poet, playwright, and songwriter. Her books have been translated into foreign languages, optioned for television, produced onstage, and nominated for the children's choice awards in many states. She lives in Maryland.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 3–6—The kids at Wordsmith Elementary School get a lesson on poetry when a thief stages a series of classroom thefts, leaving behind small poems at the scene of the crime. Edgar Allan keeps notes in his crime journal and writes some verses of his own as his classmates compete to solve the mystery. He thinks his home life is strange with his parents both employed as clowns, but when he learns more about the thoughts and personal lives of his classmates through the poetry they write, he gains a deeper understanding of himself and his community. With characters like Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett and a teacher who drinks Tennyson Tea, readers will get thinly veiled lessons describing alliteration, meter, and metaphor. The mystery is a bit slow to unfold and plotlines overlap with Edgar always making observations that cause him to seem way older than a fifth grader. However, readers who stick with it will appreciate the conclusion that itself is a poetic play. The author successfully delivers the theme that a poem is truly a gift. A good springboard for introducing poetry units.—Cheryl Ashton, Amherst Public Library, OH

School Library Journal

A mystery, a school story, sibling rivalry and the loss of a pet blend surprisingly well in this engaging chapter book. Charmingly awkward fifth grader Edgar Allan decides to solve a series of minor thefts that are plaguing his teacher, Ms. Herschel. Clues are plentiful—and rhymed—but the competition to solve them is fierce. Edgar's nemesis, Patrick Chen, seems to have the inside track since his dad works in forensics. Edgar, however, finds that the friends he makes along the way provide the winning edge. Including transcripts of Edgar's ingenuous interviews as well as poems written by a number of class members in her narrative, Amato provides a clear picture of both social and family dynamics while keeping the story moving smoothly along. The author's characteristic humor is somewhat muted, but examples of amusing wordplay abound. Some readers may guess the identity of the culprit more quickly than Edgar and his friends do, but whodunit is notreally the point. Solving puzzles, making friends and learning to see the world more clearly are the true aims of this adventure. (Mystery. 7-10)

Kirkus Reviews

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