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Missing Grace: A Kit Mystery (2010)

by Elizabeth McDavid Jones(Favorite Author)

3.93 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1593696590 (ISBN13: 9781593696597)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

American Girl Publishing Inc

review 1: kit's mother accepts a new boarder who cannot stand dogs. the new tenant insists that kit's basste hound, grace, sleep outside for as long as she is renting a room. kit's explanation that grace sleeps in the attic with kit makes no impression. & the very first night that grace sleeps outside, she disappears. kit has a few suspects in mind, specifically a couple of local bullies that had ridiculed kit & grace the day before. she, stirling, & ruthie stop by the home of the one of the bullies, but he says he has no idea where kit's dog could be & that he didn't take her. kit gets a little weepy & he softens & says he really doesn't know where her dog is. kit wonders if the other bully acted alone, but she doesn't know his address so she can't go ask him.the kids go to a park,... more thinking maybe the other kid stole grace & took her to the park & set her free. the park is far enough away that grace would have had a hard time finding her way home again. they meet a man walking a basset hound, which he explains is an expensive purebred show dog, & a woman who says she saw a blond boy sitting on a bench with a basset hound that morning, but they don't find grace.this mystery is incredibly convoluted & i can't exactly remember how the characters get from point A to point B to figure everything out, but it goes something like this:* kit starts writing down clues, suspects, & theories.* the kids visit a pet shop & are informed that a destitute-looking family made up on a man, a pregnant woman, & very blond boy had stopped in with a basset hound & purchased lots of supplies for it. they had german accents.* a woman at the local soup kitchen tells the kids that a family named the muellers fits the description of the family in the pet shop. they'd been living in the hobo jungle by the river, & they haven't been by the soup kitchen in several days, which is unlike them.* the hobos tell the kids that a man in a bowler hat offered mr. mueller a job & they left the camp. one of the hobos gives them a street name.* kit sees a house with cloth diapers hanging on the clothesline out back on the muellers' new street. a very blond boy who answers to "sunny" (the nickname the hobos had used) comes to the door but denies having a dog.* kit starts seeing more reports of missing/stolen basset hounds in the paper, including the show dog she met in the park.* kit visits the man with the show dog & he says he got the dog from a nearby breeder famous for award-winning basset hounds.* ruthie's aunt takes the kids to visit the breeder, who is closing up shop. he sold all of his equipment to his former trainer.* kit sees some photos of the trainer, in which he is wearing a bowler hat & leaning against a cadillac like the one the hobos said the bowler hat man drove.* kit realizes the trainer is stealing dogs that the breeder had sold for his new operation, with the hopes of breeding them again & making a killing on the puppies. or...something? this honestly made very little sense to me.* kit presses sunny into a sting operation after sunny confesses that mr. mueller had accepted the job before he knew it involved stealing dogs. he admits that he helped steal grace, & says that the mueller family is being blackmailed into stealing dogs. (o....kaaaay.) kit explains that if the catch the trainer, the muellers won't get in trouble with the police.* ruthie's aunt is dating a cop who helps with the sting. basically, the kids are just sipposed to sit tight & let the trainer sell one of the stolen dogs. when they find him in possession of a stolen dog, they can bust him.* but instead, kit sees the trainer with grace & blows the whole thing up by calling grace over to her. * it's enough for the cops though & they arrest the trainer & retrieve all the stolen dogs.* kit learns that grace is a purebred show-quality dog who was abandoned when her owner fell on hard times. because when a dog is worth thousands of dollars & you're broke, it definitely makes more sense to abandon the dog on the street than to try to sell it.the american girl mysteries are head & shoulders above the babysitters club mysteries when it comes to quality of writing & actual mysterious content, but they're still not great. i guess they can't be too wild because they're for kids, but they still rely a lot on hackneyed coincidence.ps--that boarder who made grace sleep outside is pretty much just pure evil. i'd kill anyone who precipitated my cat getting catnapped.
review 2: A very nice little mystery. A well written story for any youngster. In addition, American Girl fans (especilly Kit fans) will love adding this book to their collection.Kit follows the clues beyond her personal assumptions to find Grace. Her character grew throughout the story and she was able to help a family in trouble. It doesn't say, but I'm hoping she was also able to help the other families whose dogs wee stolen.The historical information regarding pets during the Great Depression and how dog shows gained in popularity is very interesting giving a glimpse at life in the 1930s.I liked this and will read it again sometime in the future. less

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