Please welcome new blogger, Shari Randall, who makes her debut today. I met Shari through the Chesapeake Chapter of SinC. Our stories were chosen for publication in, Chesapeake Crimes: This Job Is Murder, released last year by Wildside Press. Chesapeake Crimes: Homicidal Holidays, to be released in 2014, will include our new short stories, too. Shari's vocation as a children's librarian adds a new perspective we appreciate. Thanks for joining WWK, Shari. E. B. Davis
By night I write, by day I am a children’s librarian at a midsize public library. All day I answer questions, such as:
By night I write, by day I am a children’s librarian at a midsize public library. All day I answer questions, such as:
· “My teacher says I need to find a photograph of Plato for my report” (think about that one)
· “Do you have any books about images of fascism in Weimar Germany?”
· “Where’s the bathroom?”
· “Can you help me find a good book to read?”
Favorites like Encyclopedia Brown by Donald J. Sobol, Cam Jansen by David Adler, Herculeah Jones by Betsy Byars, Hank the Cowdog by John R. Erickson, and Rob Roy’s A to Z Mysteries delight young mystery fans as much as they delighted their parents.
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| Nate the Great - Original |
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| Nate the Update |
Everyone goes through an awkward phase, and this series, like that haircut you got in the 80s because everyone else did, is best forgotten.
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| Everyone goes through an awkward phase |
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| Hardy Boys go graphic. |
New favorites like Nancy Farmer’s Enola Holmes stories and Penny Warner’s charming Codebusters books are easy to recommend, since they give readers what they want: characters to cheer for and exciting plots with plenty of clues for budding detectives to follow. Michael Buckley’s Sisters Grimm series imagines that the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales were actually case files, and Bruce Hale’s series about Chet Gecko, a fourth grade lizard and self-styled gumshoe detective, plays with the tropes of the hardboiled detective story with delightful results. My favorite Chet Gecko title? Farewell, My Lunchbag.
What was your favorite mystery series when you were a child?
I read all of the Hardy Boys mysteries. They were older than I and so I hoped to grow up like them.
ReplyDeleteAlthough they were not mysteries per se, my favorite series we the "We Were There" books. Each book was a fictional rendering of an historical event told through the eyes of a child. There were 36 in total, and I loved them.
It's great fun to see my grandchildren reading some of the same books I read or that I had read/given to my children.
~ Jim
I wasn't a big mystery fan as a child. I favored The Little House on the Prairie series, A Child's Garden of Verses, and The Boxcar Children, but then there was only one book in the series when I was a child.
ReplyDeleteMy kids liked the Berenstein Bears and the Little Critter series, but neither were really mysteries, more themed to learning life's lessons.
Updating these series to relate to the problems kids encounter today seems a good idea.
Hi Jim and E.B.,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your thoughts. It is fun to share books that you loved as a child with the kids and grandkids!
I was definitely Team Nancy Drew when I was a little girl, but I would check out the Hardy Boys books in a pinch. Definitely adventurous, aspirational characters, though I didn't want to be Nancy when I grew up - I wanted to be Emma Peel (of the Avengers TV show)!
My favorite mysteries way back then were Nancy Drew, but the books I read most were horse books and when there weren't any more in our small school library that I hadn't read at least two times, I went on to the Albert Payson Terhune books about collies and developed a life-long love of this breed of dogs.
ReplyDeleteAs a third grade teacher for 20 years, I had a classroom library of hundreds and hundreds of books. I read at least 3, and sometimes 4 chapter books at a time to my students starting with a chapter every morning from one of the Chronicles of Narnia series, then in mid-morning after SSR, I read a chapter from another book that was part of a historical timeline I worked on through the year. Then I had a set of a dozen easy reader chapter books that fit into that timeline, like a Time Warp Trio book or The Magic Treehouse books with first dinosaurs, then moving to Ancient Egypt, etc. and my students would take turns reading a paragraph. After lunch I'd read from another chapter book - maybe Harry Potter or some other book. I also had A Sherlock Holmes Detective Club where kids in pairs or threes if we had an uneven number of students, would get together somewhere in the room to read a chapter in their Cam Jansen, Encyclopedia Brown or other mystery book and then write in their case notebook what the mystery was, what clues were offered and who they thought the suspect was.
I've gone on too long, and could say much, much more about the reading we did in my class, but I'll end here with saying one of the things I really miss about teaching is reading to the kids.
I forgot to add, my students loved the Boxcar Children and especially loved that the characters last name was Alden - the same as mine.
ReplyDeleteGloria, you had some very lucky students! Such creative ideas - I would have loved to have been in your class.
ReplyDeleteHey, Shari! Welcome to WWK!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was young, I read Phyllis A. Whitney's YA novels and Hester Burton's historicals.
My favorite book was written by Constance Lindsay Skinner, a Canadian writer who passed away in 1939. The book's title was Becky Landers, Frontier Warrior, and it was about a girl who grew up near Daniel Boone's family in Kentucky. A few years ago, I found a copy on the Internet and I treasure it.
I loved two science fiction novels. One called The Happy Planet would be considered hopelessly old fashioned today, but I found it charming. Another was translated, Star Girl, by Henry Winterfield. I bought it in a bidding war a few years ago and learned that my rival bidder had grown up near the author's retirement home and regularly purchased Winterfield's books when they became available on eBay.
Winterfield also wrote The Trouble at Tempetill, where the adults in a small town leave their children for a day to teach the children a lesson, but the children are stranded for longer and must fend for themselves.
Ah, what wonderful memories!
For mysteries I read all the Hardy Boys books, like Jim.
ReplyDeleteI loved A Children's Garden of Verses and The Wind in the Willow.
Shari, I had lots of my student's parents tell me the same thing. :-) But then, I'm not only a lover of books and reading, I'm also a kid at heart so 3rd graders and I got along quite well.
ReplyDeleteI love seeing what other people's favorites were! Did any of you Hardy Boys fans have The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook? I've still got that one on my shelf.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was very young, I whipped through all the Nancy Drews and then started on the Hardy Boys--not nearly as good, I thought. also loved the Boxcar Children. At a fairly early age, I moved to Phyliis Whitney and Agatha Christie.
ReplyDeleteThat's just the mysteries. I was an avid reader and read over 12 books a week every week for many, many years of my childhood. So I moved into adult books at a fairly young age. We were poor, and I owned almost none. So librarians were my best friends.
Still can hear my mother's voice--"Get your nose out of that book!"
I didn't learn to read until I was a 5th grader. Our public library refused to stock what they considered "trash," which included the Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. The favored birthday present among most of my friends was a new Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys book. We kept lists of who owned what, and tried to get our mothers to buy them for each other's birthdays (My mother seldom would. She maintained that the perfect birthday present for a girl was a new pair of white gloves for church, for a boy an initialed white handkerchief, and that was what I was usually stuck giving everyone) At some point, an older cousin with more liberal (and wealthier) parents gave my family a whole box of Bobsey Twin books, which we just devoured.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to WWK, Shari!
ReplyDeleteI was a big mystery fan when I was a child and read Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Cherry Ames, Bobbsey Twins and Vicki Barr. But, like you, I wanted to be Emma Peel.
How fun that the Boxcar Children mysteries are still published and that they have a Facebook Page.
I liked the Hardy Boys although I'm sure I was influenced by the TV show as much as the books. Now I want to have that Hardy Boys Detective Handbook that I never knew about!
ReplyDeleteAmy, I'll feature my Hardy Boys Detective Handbook in an upcoming post. It's too good to keep to myself.
ReplyDelete