Detective LaRue: Letters from the Investigation
By Mark Teague
Ages 4-8
The second book of the Ike LaRue series, this epistolary picture book (told through letters and newspaper articles) is an impressive work of visual and conceptual complexity shaded with a noir sensibility. The story unfolds with innocent Ike writing to his vacationing owner from jail, after some cats go missing. His first letters are desperate pleas for Mrs. LaRue to return and rescue him from his dire circumstances, while living it up in jail drinking coffee, eating donuts and playing checkers with police officers. These scenes are completely at odds with the descriptions in the letters, which young readers love to point out. The melodramatic wire-hair terrier eventually escapes and takes matters into his own paws to solve the mystery. 

There are wonderful puns and details throughout the book. For example, after Ike’s escape, his letters are paw-written instead of typed. And the clothes, the phones and the typewriter in the illustrations and the language in the letters place us in the 1940's. You will have to explain what being 'on the lam' means and why phones have cords. After Ike clears his name, finds the cats and solves another mystery, you’ll want to visit him again and again to uncover the gems Mark Teague has planted in his story. This is definitely a mystery book that can be reread.

Tuesday
By David Weisner
Ages 4-8
What a beautiful work of surrealistic mysteriousness. At around 8PM, when the fog rolls in, David Wiesner takes us on an amazing airborne adventure. We witness a fleet of floating amphibians as they rise from a water lily-strewn lake. They cruise on magic lily pads to a town where people really should keep their windows closed and take in their laundry at night.

An illustrator of few words, Wiesner uses four lines of text in the book to tell us the time as the story unfolds. The texts appear like scene cards in a silent movie. We readers think we know the answer to the mystery, unlike the baffled detective who can only puzzle over the lily pads scattered around town, but there is a surprise ending. We are left with more questions and an unbelievably rich catalog of delighted looking amphibian faces and gestures to thumb back through with your child and croak over with glee.

Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City
By Kristen Miller
Ages 9-12
Here is the first of two books about a group of adventurous girls who solve mysteries in New York City. In this one, a sinkhole appears overnight in a park. When Ananka Fishbein, a bookish and inquisitive 12-year-old girl, climbs into the sinkhole she finds a room that leads to her discovery of an underground “Shadow City.” There she meets a band of savvy misfit ex-girl scouts called “The Irregulars,” a reference to the great detective Sherlock Holmes. These contemporary Irregulars were recruited for their particular expertise, and the mastermind behind the Irregulars is Kiki Strike, a supremely confident waif with stark white hair and pale skin; a multilingual, scooter-riding, marital artist with a background full of international intrigue and mysteries. Ananka, who is usually one or two steps behind Kiki, assumes the Dr. Watson role. She chronicles the group’s adventures and supplies useful “how-to’s” at the end of each chapter on topics like picking locks and becoming a master of disguise. The idea that things are not always solid or what they appear to be runs through this zippy adventure mystery set above and below the streets of New York City.

Some mysteries are good to settle down with and puzzle through alone. This one is an excellent candidate for reading aloud. It is full of plot twists and turns, and entertaining examples of kid ingenuity that you’ll want to discuss immediately. It’s a great book for city kids, as it deals with everything from being held captive in Chinatown to handling an army of underground rats. There are references to obscure places in NYC that if you don’t know them, you’ll want to go look for them and have a cappuccino when you get there.

The Westing Game
By Ellen Raskin
Ages 9-12
A genuinely peculiar whodunit that really sticks with you, it is a classic and a Newbery winner, but I hadn’t read it until this year. I am including it in this list of Mysteries to Read Aloud because it is rather complicated and I think it would be useful to have a child with a good memory to assist with keeping track of the 16 heirs, who they’re paired with, and each pairs’ four clues that will reveal who among them killed Sam Westing, the reclusive corporate giant who has orchestrated this macabre game centered around his death. The winner who discovers who killed Westing inherits his millions. What?

The characters are quirky types of one kind or another, who start out fairly unlikable, from a plucky girl with braids who kicks people to a timid dressmaker who never has a bad word for anyone. By the end of this dizzying book, you’ll find yourself rooting for all of them, not to win the inheritance, but to find personal fulfillment.

 
Also check out Three Great Children's Books for Contrarian-Loving Kids, or look through our posts on books.