The Book Case

by Dave Shelton, Dave Shelton (Illustrator)

Overview

A hilarious illustrated book about a crime-solving heroine who enters a boarding school filled with very peculiar girls, from Bransford Boase Award-winner Dave Shelton.

Daphne is off to an exclusive girls' boarding school, where she'll be given a brand-new start after her expulsion. But St. Rita's school for girls is not your ordinary school. And these are certainly not ordinary girls. As it turns out, nothing is quite what you'd expect at St. Rita's. But then she meets Emily Lime, a crime-solving genius, who's looking for a new library assistant. And the book smart Daphne is just the girl for the job. Mystery and intrigue are about to strike St. Rita's and Emily Lime is going to need all the help she can get...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781338323818
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	05/28/2019
Sold by:	Scholastic, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	87 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Dave Shelton is the author of Thirteen Chairs. His UK debut novel for children, A Boy And A Bear In A Boat, was shortlisted for numerous awards in the UK and won the Branford Boase Award --- an award given to an outstanding children's or young adult novel by a first-time writer. He's also the creator of the UK comic strip "Good Dog, Bad Dog." He lives in Cambridge, England, with his family.

Editorial Reviews

2019-03-03

At her new school full of horsenappers, bootleggers, and jam thieves, Daphne becomes a detective.

When English schoolgirl Daphne arrives at the imposing gates bearing the legend "St. Rita's School for Spirited Girls, est. 1873," all she knows is that she's been offered a scholarship and a job as an assistant librarian. There's a crater in the driveway from an accident with stolen chemistry supplies and a massive hole in the dormitory floor made by a falling cannonball. The students (all apparently white) pick locks and forge Monets. As the deputy head explains, "you'd need to be bonkers in the noodle to want to be here. It's a dreadful place!" Even Daphne's job as assistant librarian is a mess: The gorgeous library is nearly empty after a fire that destroyed the old library, the head librarian who hired Daphne is on indefinite sick leave, and her replacement is a small girl who doesn't seem inclined to trust Daphne. But somebody needs to solve all the skulduggery and shenanigans: break-ins, thefts, and even a missing student. The school is so odd that the mid-20th-century time period is easy to miss, and both the third-person narration that shifts between limited and omniscient and the narrative voice's adult tone are similarly unmooring. Cartoonish illustrations by the author are comical but as slightly off as St. Rita's itself.

Fans of David Walliams will enjoy the formulaic nonsense, but there's no shortage of higher-quality slapstick mysteries for eager readers. (Mystery. 8-11)

Kirkus Reviews