Tuesday, December 05, 2006

The Dog Den Mystery

Jack Russell: Dog Detective, # 1, The Dog Den Mystery by Darrel and Sally Odgers. Kane/Miller.

The Plot: Jack (a Jack Russell terrier) lives with Sarge (a police detective) and solves crimes.

The Good: A chapter book, a level up from beginning readers and not as intimidating as middle grade books.

This is a mystery told from the POV of a dog, Jack, so of course it's a mystery that affects a dog. Here, Jack moves to a new house where some of his stuff gets stolen. Jack tracks the missing items, meets the neighbor dogs and finds out about other strange things, jumps to a wrong conclusion or two along the way but ultimately saves the day.

I like that its a real mystery, with clues and problem solving. There are also fun things, like maps, lists, glossaries, and "Jack's Facts."

Jack's Facts.
Certain you are right?
You are probably wrong.
That is a fact.

My favorite fact: The more dollars the dog's worth, the dimmer the dog.

I really like Jack's maps; Queen Lucy hasn't started reading for fun yet, but she loves books with maps and this is one of the books I've given to her hoping that it will spur her on. Sure enough, she had fun with them and is intrigued about a book that stars animals (she loves animals.)

The publisher has a teachers guide (pdf) (click on play pages).

Links: the Jen Robinson review; the Bookshelves of Doom review.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for linking to my review. Very funny, how we posted reviews of the same books so close together in time last week. I would have linked back to your posts, too, but was traveling, and had set mine up for delayed posting while I was gone.