Recensioni
Baby's Favorite Rhymes to Sign: Sing and Sign the… di Penny Warner
While prepping the story Connor learns a dead man has been found in the basement floor of a building under construction. A building that the citizens of Flat Skunk have been calling a high-rise. The building that is to become the new home of the Mother Lode Monitor, the weekly newspaper of Flat Skunk and her rival for dispensing the news to the community. The body is identified as Cullen Delancy, the soil engineer of the project and time of death was almost midnight.
Can Connor make this her story? Why was he at a construction site at almost midnight? Did the earthquake cause him to fall? Or was he pushed?
As she investigates Cullen Delancy, strange events, calls and emails occur.
A pleasant mystery with a cast of characters that is developing as the series continues.
Mr. Skelton, the "Skeleton Man" has a secret to hide, and the Code Busters club are going to uncover it.Cody, Quinn, Luke and M.E. bonded over the love of puzzles and codes. For Cody, whose whole life was turned upside down when her parents split up, the Code Busters Club is her favorite place in the world. Complete with a secret hideout, this is a club I'd love to be a part as well!
I definitely see young readers falling in love with these characters. From the fashionista, to the extreme sports lover, there is a personality for every reader to latch onto. These kids are fun, smart, and really brave too.The absolute best part, and I'm sure you will agree, was the codes and puzzles to solve! From semaphores, to Morse code, each chapter brings something new to the table. Are you a little lost? Never fear! The keys and answers are in the back waiting for you. I guarantee you'll be having so much fun solving them you won't want to look though. I had too much pride, I admit it!
Every chapter title is in sign language. By the time I reached the end I started to recognize a lot of the signals for letters. How cool is that?As you can see, this is a read that I really loved! The mystery here was fabulously laid out, with clues all along the way. Even as an older reader I found myself wanting to find out what happens next. I'm happy to state that there are more books in the series and, truth be told, I'll be there to read them! I can't wait to open up book two and dive in!
Then there's strange moments, like when she's trapped in a dark place and decides to name drop not just Hellen Keller but the Miracle Worker (the scene is otherwise really interesting). Or the way she silently apologizes to her mother after she escapes certain death and uses a swear word out loud. WTF.
The ending was cliched, but, now again, so were all the feelings the main character has through the book (e.g. guy hot, little girl = sweet, other woman = bitch).
I haven’t read others in this series, so I don’t know all the backstory of the characters, but this is a fun group of late-elementary-aged children.
It definitely gave me a “Scooby Doo” vibe—you know, those meddling kids! The bad guy was definitely reminiscent of a bad guy from that long-running cartoon series.
The kids worked well together and supported each other. What I didn’t like was the class outcast, “Matt the Brat.” I think he was a stereotype of the boy who can’t sit still and finds himself in trouble a lot. Yes, he was a bit of a braggart, but I think he was poorly handled. The Code Busters were very unsympathetic and cold toward him until near the end, when they actually come to like him a bit. I hope that is a trend that will continue in further volumes. The “troublemaking boy” is a trope that, as a teacher, I find rather harmful.
The most far-out part of the story? These kids get to go on overnight camping field trips. Must be nice to live in a district with that kind of money!
My third-grader loves cracking codes and I think she would really enjoy this if I had a hard copy of it.
Possible Objectionable Material:
Kids do things without adult permission. Some dangerous situations.
Who Might Like This Book:
Kids who like mysteries and enjoy learning about all kinds of codes. Scooby Doo fans. The suggested age range is appropriate, although I know a few second graders who could easily handle it, and many eighth graders who would feel they are above it.
This review also at http://biblioquacious.blogspot.com/2016/06/kid-crimebusters.html
Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC.
The man's death brings to light problems with the construction company and quite possibly the construction site. Now rebar, deeply dug foundations, and all the other stuff that goes with building a multistory structure says to me, big, urban area. Flat Skunk in no other book I've read is described as being big enough to need this size of a building. So I had to wonder if the construction company was trying to go out of business and abscond with the venture capital.
No. The construction goofiness is just goofiness. The plot instead is a mixture books from Diane Mott Davidson's series. I think these similarities are a product of both authors being of the same generation, and thus pulling from similar lifetime sources. But it did make solving the crime very easy; something I did by about the halfway point.
My final thought, though, is that I'd love to revisit Connor in new mystery. Her deafness, while not the main point, is an interesting side note to all the books. She often comments on the technology and techniques she uses to live her life and communicate with her hearing neighbors. I just wonder if cell phone saturation and texting would have made things a little easier for her.
Then there's strange moments, like when she's trapped in a dark place and decides to name drop not just Hellen Keller but the Miracle Worker (the scene is otherwise really interesting). Or the way she silently apologizes to her mother after she escapes certain death and uses a swear word out loud. WTF.
The ending was cliched, but, now again, so were all the feelings the main character has through the book (e.g. guy hot, little girl = sweet, other woman = bitch).
This book won an Agatha and an Anthony award. I found it dry and cliche. I probably would have loved it when I was 8 or 9. Although Warner is a successful writer, I don't think this series must have really taken off as I can't really find any evidence of there being more.
Presley has been hired by a winery to put on a party to celebrate the launch of a new line of wines. There's also a lot of bad blood between the rival wineries. At the two extremes: an eco-warrior who wants to get every winery to be green certified; and a giant conglomerate who is buying up the smaller wineries to produce massive amounts of cheap (box) wine.
So of course a guest ends up dead. Her most memorable parties end up this way. And of course, her client is accused with the crime. Somewhere in the middle of the rivalries and the Bingo night gossip is the truth. Presley with the help of her mother are on the case!
Any qualms I had about the direction of the series (see my review of How to Party with a Killer Vampire) were put to rest in How to Dine on Killer Wine. Clearly Presley is back in her element — catering at famous landmarks around the Bay. The Napa Valley felt like Napa and the rivalries came off as believable.
The tension between the different characters as well as Presley's removal from the urban bustle of San Francisco, brings to mind another book I read around the same time, Winter Study by Nevada Barr. The approach, though, is much lighter in Warner's book.
The day before the party, as Presley is setting up, she meets some young adults who practice parkour. She warns them that they're trespassing, but they don't seem to care.
The next morning, they learn that one of them, known as "Spidey" is dead. At first it's assumed that he had fallen while running, but it's soon determined that he was murdered. The suspect list is long: any of the movie's cast and crew, some paparazzi, and the cemetery's creepy caretaker, Otto.
As usual, Presley doesn't think that the police are working quickly enough to find the killer, and puts herself in jeopardy by investigating on her own.
Presley is a charming protagonist, if a bit headstrong. Like many amateur sleuths, she walks into dangerous situations quite certain that she'll be able to defend herself. Often she's right, but occasionally she's wrong.
This is a light, quick read; occasionally funny but not at all frightening, despite the title.
Each chapter begins with a hint for planning the perfect vampire-themed party, and there are more ideas in an appendix.
The book concludes with a chapter of the next, as yet untitled Party-Planning Mystery, due in September of 2012.
*FTC Full Disclosure: Many thanks to the publisher, who sent me a copy of the book for review purposes.
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