Boston Public Library
Detectives: A Reading List for Children
Fiction for Older Readers

Booklists for Kids


*Bellairs, John. THE CURSE OF THE BLUE FIGURINE.
Johnny Dixon and his neighbor Professor Chilermass must unravel the secret behind an Egyptian statue, a magic ring, and a wizard's ghost to break a deadly curse.

*Hildick, E. W. THE CASE OF THE WANDERING WEATHERVANES.
Was it just a high-school prank or something more when weathervanes began vanishing mysteriously all over town? The McGurk Organization discovers it's not funny when someone steals a weathervane from their science expert, Brains Bellingham.

*Howe, James. EAT YOUR POISON, DEAR.
Was it the apple lasagna or the flu that was making the students sick? Sebastian Barth sets out to solve the mysterious poisonings in his eight-grade class during "apple month" at the school cafeteria.

*Meyers, Susan. P.J. CLOVER, PRIVATE EYE: THE CASE OF THE BORROWED BABY.
P.J. Clover, Private Eye, and Stacy Jones, Associate, have two days to find out who stole a necklace from Findltetter's Jewelry Store and a little Tina Toomey's Baby Cuddles doll, or they can say good-bye to P.J's T-shirt collection and Stacy's new ten-speed bike. Will they have to call in rival detective Butch Bigelow for help?

*Newman, Robert. THE CASE OF THE BAKER STREET IRREGULAR.
After Andrew Craigie's guardian is kidnapped during a visit to London, Andrew becomes one of Sherlock Holmes's gang of street-urchin sleuths, the Baker Street Irregulars.

*Sobol, Donald J. ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN, BOY DETECTIVE.
See if you can come up with solutions to these brainteasing cases even faster than ten-year-old Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown, who solves his police chief father's hardest cases during dinner.

Tate, Eleanora E. THE SECRET OF GUMBO GROVE.
While helping Miz Effie Pfluggins write a history of New Africa No. 1 Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery, Raisin Stackhouse turns up some surprising facts about the founder and first mayor of her hometown.

Wells, Rosemary. THE MAN IN THE WOODS.
High school freshmen Helen and Pinky turn detectives after they discover that a fellow classmate, arrested as the Punk Rock Thrower, could be innocent.

* More books about the same detective are published by this author.


Compiled by Kathy Kire, General Library, Children's Room, 1994.