Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
For kids detective series, I'd lean more on Encyclopedia Brown and the Bellairs books, partly because I find the syndicate ownership with pen names and editing of The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew distasteful (though honestly, the editing bothers me less than the other things).
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I liked Encyclopedia Brown. But even as a kid, I thought some of the solutions weren’t that great. I remember thinking, “Are you sure that’s enough to get someone arrested?”
Sure, it was a great way to teach kids to look for clues in the text. Our teachers used to read the chapters to the class and get us to guess. They were better than the other “mini-mysteries” out there. But sometimes, the solutions were too forced. And the stories could be even more formulaic than Nancy Drew. (Why the bully didn’t end up either in jail or running for mayor I’ll never know…)
This was always an issue for those “mini-mysteries.” I seem to remember there was one where the sleuth figured out someone claiming to be an English professor was a fake because the sleuth told him to “scan” a document for clues, and he quickly read it (skimmed it); instead of quickly looking over the paper (scanning it). Come on!
