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In Times Past
an eBook on CD
by Carol Hurst and Rebecca Otis

Integrating US History with Literature in Grades 3-8.

Enliven your US History curriculum!

Teach US History using great kids books.

More Info

Mysteries

One of the most popular genres of literature for both adult and child readers is that of mystery and detective fiction. Looking at the books analytically involves summarization, prediction, and reading for details among other skills. Fortunately, it also involves some good reading and some good critical thinking. Also fortunately, for us, there are good mysteries on a wide range of reading levels from picture books to the 2009 collection of Edgar Alan Poe with essays from Stephen King and other contemporary adult mystery writers. When you think about it, the genre really consists of at least three distinct subgroups: puzzle, detective/crime and suspense. Suspense is, in turn, subdivided into the occult and the realistic. The occult category can be subdivided into ghost and non-ghost, I guess.

Let's start with two very simple picture books that we can use with the youngest kids. That very simplicity, however, makes them useful for analytical work with older readers. Ruth Brown's A Dark, Dark Tale (NAL Dutton, 1992 ISBN 0-803-71672-9. Order Info. May be out of print but you can still find it used and in libraries.) is a slight twist on a traditional folk tale.

This is surely an example of suspense fiction as with a dark, dark cat we enter a dark, dark house and walk slowly, page by page, up the dark, dark stairs and into a dark, dark room where we open a dark, dark cupboard and discover a mouse. That let-down of a discovery, of course, is an example of anticlimax - a frequent component of traditional suspense stories like "The Golden Arm". The type leads you to believe that the reader should shout out those last words: "A MOUSE!" but I've always felt that they should be whispered or squeaked. Brown builds the suspense with the repeated phrases and with our forward motion which we know leads to trouble. We're the victims and the protagonists in this one. The illustrations provide the atmosphere, a necessary component of suspense, with colors deep and dark. There are, however, some recognizable paintings on the walls which some sharp-eyed viewers might point out.

A picture book example of the other two subgroups of mysteries, puzzles and crime fiction, although you may not have thought of it that way, would be David Wiesner's Tuesday (Clarion, 1991 ISBN 0-395-55113-7. Order Info). Here you have the flight of the frogs which is a puzzle: how and why did it happen? Are the frogs given the power of flight or are the lily pads the gifted items? There is evidence to support both contentions: when daylight comes, the lily pads drop wherever they were and the frogs hop back to the marsh indicating that the lily pads were the holders of the power of flight. However, in the last picture pigs are flying and there are no lily pads in sight indicating that the frogs perhaps used the lily pads but had the power themselves.

The crime/detective part comes in at the end when the town is trying to solve the puzzle of the inappropriately placed lily pads. An eye witness is attempting to explain what he saw out of the corner of his eye during a midnight snack. A plainclothes detective is examining the evidence and, we are sure, everybody's got a solution to the mystery.

Chris Van Allsburg has given us several mysteries but let's take his latest one for now. Bad Day at Riverbend (Houghton, 1995 ISBN 0-395-67347-X. Order Info) is illustrated differently than most of his work. The technique of illustration alone is a mystery for first time viewers of the book. In fact, in this mystery we the viewers are the main ones deceived. Instead of Van Allsburg's usual almost three dimensional effect which plays with perspective, the appearance here is of a flat surfaced, two dimensional effect. It's a tale of the old west and the sheriff is alarmed by reports of a peculiar greasy substance falling from the sky preceded by a bright light. We join the sheriff and his posse as they travel the trail to locate the sources of that terrible greasy substance. After the kids know the secret, go back through the book to look for clues. We should have figured it out but, of course, that's what all armchair detectives say.

It's time to look at some of the series books for many of them are mysteries of one sort or another. Nancy Drew, Fear Street, Goose Bumps, Babysitters' Club and many, many others fall into this genre. Start some charts such as the ones below:

Get kids to talk about the heroes and heroines of these series tales. Look for realistic vs less than realistic characters, growth or lack of growth or change in them as a result of the actions and reactions in the books. Encourage them to look for hard-to-believe coincidences which tie up mysteries in a few unbelievable pages. Those elements, of course, are present in lots of mysteries, not just the series books.

Suggest that kids look for the authors' techniques and styles in both the series and individual creations. How do they maintain interest? Do they aim for suspense? How? If it's a mystery the reader is supposed to be able to solve, does the author play fair? Are the clues there? Are they too easily found? Does he or she use cliff hangers? Look at the opening sentence or first few paragraphs. How do they grab our interest?

Sometimes, through the use of charts and activities such as those, kids can see the formulas and a few can see that the books that stray from formula writing are more interesting. Remember, however, before you throw up your hands in horror at the junky series books, that you have to read a lot of junk before you know what it is and that we all have an appetite for some junk.

It's time to look at some examples of good mystery books. In order of the sophistication necessary for appreciation, some of my choices would be:

The first books on my list are series books and I love them all. The Hank the Cowdog books by John Erickson (The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog. Gulf Publishing Company Order Info) are among the funniest available for young readers. You'll want to read one aloud. After that, you really should let the kids on that wavelength read the others independently (the reading level is about third grade) but it's hard not to grab for the next one and start drawling them out. Hank, in charge of security on the Texas ranch, is the Barney Fife of dogdom -- slightly paranoid, long on sincerity, short on brains. His assistant, Drover, is a coward, usually finding that an old leg wound acts up whenever danger looms, but he worships Hank and thinks he's brilliant. Loper and Sally May own the ranch and, no matter what he does or how earnestly he tries not to, Hank usually runs afoul of Sally May before the tale is told. Sally May's view of Hank is in direct opposition to that of Drover. Besides the hilarious slapstick, there are many wonderful gaps in the narration, allowing the reader's mind to fill in the details based on the results. If you're not a Hank fan, you will be after you've tried one.

Robbie Branscum's The Murder of Hound Dog Bates (Puffin, 1982 ISBN 0-14-037593-7. Order Info. May be out of print but is available used and in libraries) is a logical step from Hank. There's the dog, of course, and there's also great good humor. You wouldn't think so at the beginning, for Hound Dog Bates is indeed dead. Sass, owner of that beloved dog, is convinced that one of the three aunts with whom he lives poisoned him because they've always hated Hound Dog. There are few clues and Sass's only hope is to create so much guilt that one of them will confess. This is a book that most fourth graders can handle easily.

Willo Davis Roberts has given us lots of good mysteries but my favorite remains one of her first: The View from the Cherry Tree (Simon & Schuster, 1975 ISBN 0-689-30483-8. 192 pages. Order Info). This book is accessible for readers from fourth grade up and has been around since the seventies but seems even older. There's something reminiscent of the light mystery movies of the forties and fifties here. Maybe it's that the impending wedding which is occupying all the attention of Rob's family has elements of "Father of the Bride". Rob retreats from all the turmoil to his favorite hidden seat on a large cherry tree and from there he witnesses the murder of Old Lady Calloway, the neighborhood busy-body and crab. Most good readers will solve the mystery before the characters do, but that's half the fun.

Betsy Byars has created a series of light mysteries with scary moments for kids in fourth grade and up starring Herculeah Jones. This delightful heroine is the only child of a policeman and a private eye. Of course she's got to be involved in any mystery she becomes aware of much to the dismay of her parents who, by the way, are divorced but each is very much involved in their child's life. Her loyal friend, Meat, is less aggressive than Herculeah but gets drawn into the action anyway. My favorite volume is Tarot Says Beware (Viking, 1994 ISBN 0-670-85575-8. 151 pages. Order Info). In this book Herculeah finds the body of her friend Madame Rosa the fortune teller and, although both her mother and father forbid any further action on her part, Herculeah is soon the intended second victim of the murderer.

An innocent caught in the middle of a crime or would-be crime is thirteen year old Andy in Avi's Wolf Rider (Simon & Schuster, 1986 ISBN 0-02-707760-8. 216 pages. Order Info). A stranger named Zeke calls Andy and confesses that he has murdered Nina Klemmer. Andy calls the police who write it off as a crank call but then Andy locates Nina's phone number, and finding that she is still alive, warns her about the intended murder. Nina is frightened by Andy's call, but it is Andy she's frightened of. Soon Andy is told by the police that he must seek counseling or face jail time himself. No one believes Andy, not even his father, and soon Andy is involved in a life or death confrontation with Zeke. This is a good, taut mystery.

A book that's very popular with many young readers from the fifth grade up is Caroline B. Cooney's The Face on the Milk Carton (Bantam, 1990 ISBN 0-440-22065-3. 184 pages. Order Info). Here the crime is kidnapping and the kidnappers are the people that Janie has loved and known as her parents. It's the face on the milk carton that Janie recognizes as her three year old self that turns her previously carefree existence upside down. Did she really give up her own parents for a dish of ice cream?

Mel Glenn's Who Killed Mr. Chippendale? (Lodestar, 1996 ISBN 0-525-67530-2. 100 pages. Order Info http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0525675302/carolhurstschild) uses an intriguing device to tell a story for kids in about fifth grade and up. Mr. Chippendale, high school English teacher, is murdered while jogging on the track before school. In a series of short poems we see the event and its aftermath from many perspectives including that of the murderer. Although the use of poetry to tell a tale of murder is not common, the device by which the murderer is revealed is: we gather all suspects together for the denouement. The book is challenging, not because of vocabulary or sentence length, but because so much is left for the reader to infer and because the cast of characters is large.

Lois Duncan has created many thrilling mysteries for young adult readers. Among my favorites is I Know What You Did Last Summer (Simon & Schuster, 1973 ISBN 0-671-73589-6. 198 pages. Order Info). There's no mystery about who did the crime here. The mystery lies in who knows about it. Two couples, Ray and Julie, Barry and Helen, after a couple of drinks and a little pot, run down a child who appears out of nowhere in the night on a bicycle. They do report the accident but they don't stop. After making a pact never to reveal what happened, the four go their separate ways. Now, however, it's a year later and Julie gets a note in the mail stating, "I know what you did last summer." Soon Helen receives a picture of a little boy on a bike; Ray gets a copy of the newspaper clipping. The fact that someone knows what happened brings the four together but each meets the accuser separately.

No exploration of short stories is complete without reading Poe. If you are looking for an anthology of his stories I highly recommend this one. In the Shadow of the Master: Classic Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (Poe, Edgar Allan and Michael Connelly, ed. Morrow, 2009. ISBN 9780061690396. 416 pages. Grades 6-12. Order Info.) This anthology includes essays by various mystery writers like Stephen King and Sue Grafton about how the reading of Poe has affected them. The experience of Poe as required reading in school comes up again and again. The "broccoli" that teenagers are required to eat. The essay writers often compare their early experiences of reading Poe with later readings when they were able to discover greater meaning. Read more about this book.

Robert Cormier's I Am the Cheese (Dell, 1981 ISBN 0-440-94060-5. 220 pages. Order Info). Cormier never makes things easy for us and this is one of his most mind-boggling. Adam is riding his old, almost unrideable bike toward a hospital in Vermont where, he is convinced, his father waits for him. There are flashbacks, excerpts from taped interviews between Adam and a mysterious "interviewer". It is through them that the horror of Adam's existence is gradually revealed. We learn that Adam and his mother and father have been relocated through a witness protection program -- a fact that was not shared with Adam until he discovered some evidence on his own. However, his father has kept the specifics of the testimony and his knowledge from Adam for his own protection. Gradually, Adam discovers that the manipulation hasn't ended there and with him we find out what's happened to his parents. This is a hard, cynical and fascinating book.

We know who the murderer is in Nathan's Run by John Gilstrap (HarperCollins, 1996 ISBN 0-06-017385-8. 292 pages. Order Info. May be out of print but you can find it used and through libraries). We know from the beginning that twelve year old Nathan Bailey killed a guard at the juvenile detention center and escaped. The police know it too and Warren Michaels is in charge of the investigation. We, however, are privy to one more fact: the guard had been trying to kill Nathan. It was self-defense. For a long time, we don't know why Nathan was the intended victim, but we are on his side as Nathan takes flight. Soon many others are swayed to Nathan's defense as he calls a radio talk show and tells his side. Excitement grows as a hit man takes on the task of finding and killing Nathan and there are more killings, but Nathan eludes both the police and the hit man in a story slightly reminiscent of "The Fugitive". Although this is the author's first book, he manages to make it all believable and suspenseful. Like many of his radio listeners, we cheer for Nathan. A warning, however: some of the language may upset some people.

Related Areas of Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site

• Other subjects through literature.

Related Areas on the Internet

• Learning with Mysteries web site for teachers (http://www.MysteryNet.com/learn/)
• Kids Love a Mystery for kids and adults
  http://www.KidsLoveAMystery.com/