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Edgar Allan's Official Crime Investigation Handbook (2000)

by Mary Amato(Favorite Author)

3.76 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0545359899 (ISBN13: 9780545359894)

languge

English

genre

Poetry

review 1: Very Ambitious, and Mostly SuccessfulAt its most basic level this is a school daze mystery story. Things have been stolen from Edgar's fifth grade classroom, starting with the theft of the class goldfish. In its place is a note from the thief, a poem actually, bragging about the theft. Edgar is on the case and starts to investigate. But his classmate Patrick has started a rival investigation, and Patrick is making a lot more progress a lot more quickly than is Edgar. So, at first blush this looks like it will be an agreeable but pretty predictable school mystery. There are lots of them around, for every level of reader, and many of them are fine. But wait. There's more going on here than you might suspect. This is also a very ambitious teaching book that has a strong and... more consistent teaching purpose. The reader of this mystery is also going to learn a lot about, and maybe even be inspired to read and write more, poetry. The school daze book that also teaches occupies a comfy if small niche. There are books that have a math theme. (I'm thinking of, say, Colin Davies's "Mathamagical..."). A particular favorite is Ron Koertge's "Shakespeare Bats Cleanup", in which a bored junior high student stuck at home with mono picks up a poetry book from his dad's den and gets hooked on the Bard. But, I've never encountered a book for this young a bunch of readers that's this good at encouraging a love, (or at least a better understanding), of a subject like poetry.In this book, the mystery clues are found in poems left at the scene. The class's language arts teacher is beginning a term on poetry and he incorporates the mystery into his lessons and bases some lessons on the mystery. We follow the kids as they learn about metaphor and simile and try to write their own poems, and a lot of this circles back to the point that the kids are writing poems about the mystery. This sounds forced or a bit precious but it isn't. It is handled so subtly and well that the kids' sudden awakening to the possibility of poetry as truth feels honest. The teacher says that a poem is a gift and that a poem is a mystery and the kids all respond to the idea of poetic mystery, and even start reading between the lines of the poems written by their classmates. (For example, a poem written by one girl about a lonely weeping willow opens Edgar's eyes to the fact that his classmate is sad because her best friend has left her for a new best friend. That's pretty heady stuff for this age group.) While the poetry angle works well the author also loads in a lot of angst on Edgar's part about always being beaten to the punch by Mr. Perfect Patrick, and that gets old even if it is resolved toward the end of the book. All of Edgar's classmates conveniently just fall right into line to suit the plot in terms of buying into the poetry lessons, beginning to work together, fixing broken friendships, and so on. But that stuff isn't bad, it's just unconvincing and not strictly necessary. (Although, you could level the same sort of gripe about "War and Peace", so what do I know?)But plot points and character development are not the heart of the book, and these are just minor quibbles anyway. The bottom line is that this ambitious book works, it holds interest, it tries to accomplish something new and valuable, it makes poetry appealing, and it has a basically sweet and affirmative vibe. That works for me.Please note that I found this book while browsing the local library's Kindle books, and downloaded it for free. I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.
review 2: Edgar Allans Official Crime investagation notebookBy:Mary AnneIn my opinion Edger Allans Official Crime investagation Notebook is a very good book because it has lot of people in the story and because these two kids were trying to solve a crime at their school.The two kids went to school and when they got in their class their class pet was gone and everyone felt sad about the pet so one of the kids decided to figure out where it went.Then another kid decided to do the same thing and then the kid was solving the crime too and then the kid had a weakness where if someone does the samething as him he wold not solve the crime.Then at the end of the story three kids solve the crime and the other kid felt sad because he didn't solve the crime and he threw his notebook in the trash.Then one of the three kids went to the notebook and started to read it and he felt bad because what he read was that his parent's were divorce.Then the kid felt so sad he wanted to help him with his friends.Then teacher's birthday came and everyone wanted to write him a card for his birthday.Then when the teacher received the letter he loved it so much that everyone gave him his favorite box of tea. less

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