One of the most interesting and challenging requests I've had so far happened this week, and I thought it deserved a post of its own.
An 11-year-old Hispanic boy (Gustavo) came in looking for mysteries. He'd read the Encyclopedia Brown series but was looking for something longer. This was a total stumper to me... Adult mysteries I'm pretty conversant with, and I could probably do pretty well with stuff for teens, but once you get below age 16, I'm very shaky on what is age appropriate.
So I called the children's desk of another branch to get some help and got the following recommendations: Dorothy Hoobler's four book Samurai series (which starts with The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn), Bruce Coville's Alien Adventures series, Blue Balliet's art-themed mysteries (starting with Chasing Vermeer), Wendelin Van Draanen's Sammy Keyes series, and the Einstein Anderson series. I looked at some of these with Gustavo, but kept running into problems in that he didn't want anything supernatural, anything where the protagonist was a girl, or an animal (yes, I'm serious, we found a mystery series starring a mouse and another starring a cat.)
Eventually, I spotted Brian Selznick'sThe Invention of Hugo Cabret on the shelf and gave him that, which he seemed to think was a good prospect. I'd read it when it first came out and didn't think it was that great, but all the trade reviews and other librarians seem to love it, so what do I know? Fairly stumped, I ended up quickly running through all the books looking for those with a "Mystery" sticker on the spine, unfortunately, most of them had girl protagonists or some other sticking point for him.
So, I've asked a few friends for help and will doing some more research, results of which will be in my next post. If you have any suggestions for Gustavo, please pot them in the comments.
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4 comments:
This is based on my own son, but here are some recommendations for post-Encyclopedia Brown. It is a hard niche, because an Encyclopedia Brown fan wants puzzles without too much teen relationship angst:
Ed Decter's series, beginning with Expedition to Blue Cave
TinTin
Hardy Boys original series
Anthony Horowitz's humor mysteries - I'd recommend starting with South by Southeast. Some of these are better than others, and the first one, the Falcon Malteaser, is too much of a movie spoof.
Hello, I just discovered your blog. Looking forward to reading more of your adventures! :)
What about the Hardy Boys series?
Or Goosebumps?
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