MYSTERY MONTH
IN OCTOBER 2020
Audio Books
Reading aloud never gets old!
Enjoy some audio books while you eat lunch, paint the house, garden, or drive.
Chasing Vermeer
Written by Blue Balliett,
Narrated by Ellen Reilly
"Chasing Vermeer" is a fictional book that teaches young readers about art, writing, math, and history in a way that is fun and exciting. Through an art theft and other mysterious happenings, the main characters, Petra and Calder, become friends, grow to be more courageous, and solve an art crime.
Half Moon Investigations
Written by Eoin Colfer,
Narrated by Sean Patrick Reilly
Fletcher Moon has never been like other kids. For one thing, he has had to suffer the humiliating nickname "Half Moon" because of his short stature. But the real reason Fletcher is different is that ever since he was a baby, he's had a nose for sniffing out mysteries. And let's just say, it's not a skill that has been appreciated by many people, including his own family.
That doesn't bother Fletcher, though. After graduating at the top of his Internet class, he is officially certified as the youngest detective in the world. He even has a silver-plated detective's badge to prove it. Everything is going along fine until two things happen: a classmate hires him to solve a crime, and his prized badge is stolen. All signs point to the town's most notorious crime family, the Sharkeys.
As Fletcher follows the clues, evidence of a conspiracy begins to emerge. But before he can crack the case, Fletcher finds himself framed for a serious crime. To clear his name, he will have to pair up with the unlikeliest of allies and go on the run from the authorities. Fletcher has 12 hours to find the guilty party, or he is the guilty party.
The Magician's Elephant
Written by Kate DiCamillo,
Narrated by Juliet Stevenson
When a fortuneteller's tent appears in the market square of the city of Baltese, orphan Peter Augustus Duchene knows the questions that he needs to ask: Does his sister still live? And if so, how can he find her? The fortuneteller's mysterious answer (an elephant! An elephant will lead him there!) sets off a chain of events so remarkable, so impossible, that you will hardly dare to believe it’s true.
Family Movie Night
Time to get out the popcorn and relax!
Watch these phenomenal movies that will make you laugh, cry, smile, and shout.
Movies for ages 7-10
Labyrinth (1986)
Teenage Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) journeys through a maze to recover her baby brother (Toby Froud) from a goblin king (David Bowie).
No Deposit,
No Return (1976)
Mischievous youngsters Tracy (Kim Richards) and Jay (Brad Savage) quickly grow tired of staying with their dull but wealthy grandpa, J.W. Osborne (David Niven). So they devise a brilliant scheme in hopes of funding a plane trip to China to visit their mom. The kids enlist bumbling burglars Bert (Don Knotts) and Duke (Darren McGavin) to kidnap them, then demand a huge ransom check from Osborne. Unexpectedly, the children and the crooks bond and begin forgetting all about their arrangement.
Now You See Him,
Now You Don't (1972)
Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell) is a science student at Medfield College who inadvertently invents a liquid capable of rendering objects and people invisible. Before Dexter and his friends, Debbie and Richard Schuyler (Michael McGreevey), can even enjoy their spectacular discovery, corrupt businessman A.J. Arno (Cesar Romero) plots to get his greedy hands on it. Slapstick hijinks ensue as Dexter and his pals try to thwart the evil Arno before he can use the invisibility spray to rob a bank.
Movies for ages 11-14
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Writer and notorious marriage detractor Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) falls for girl-next-door Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane), and they tie the knot on Halloween. When the newlyweds return to their respective family homes to deliver the news, Brewster finds a corpse hidden in a window seat. With his eccentric aunts (Josephine Hull, Jean Adair), disturbed uncle (John Alexander), and homicidal brother (Raymond Massey), he starts to realize that his family is even crazier than he thought.
Holes (2003)
A boy is wrongfully sent to a brutal camp, where the camp warden and her staff force the children in their care to mysteriously dig holes all day long in the desert. Their rehabilitation is questioned, as they think something sinister is involved.
Movies for ages 14+
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
Dr. Ben McKenna (James Stewart) is on vacation with his wife (Doris Day) and son in Morocco when a chance encounter with a stranger sets their trip, and their lives, on a drastically different course. The stranger, killed in front of the family in the marketplace, reveals an assassination plot to the Americans. The couple's son is abducted in order to ensure the plot is kept secret, and suddenly the mother and father, with no help from the police, must figure out a way to get their child back.
Count of Monte Cristo (2002)
The classic story of an innocent man wrongly, but deliberately imprisoned and his brilliant strategy for revenge against those who betrayed him. Dashing young sailor Edmond Dantes (Jim Caviezel) is a guileless and honest young man whose peaceful life and plans to marry the beautiful Mercedes (Dagmara Dominczyk) are abruptly shattered when his best friend Fernand (Guy Pearce), who wants Mercedes for himself, deceives him.
Rear Window (1954)
Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell) is a science student at Medfield College who inadvertently invents a liquid capable of rendering objects and people invisible. Before Dexter and his friends, Debbie and Richard Schuyler (Michael McGreevey), can even enjoy their spectacular discovery, corrupt businessman A.J. Arno (Cesar Romero) plots to get his greedy hands on it. Slapstick hijinks ensue as Dexter and his pals try to thwart the evil Arno before he can use the invisibility spray to rob a bank.
Reading Time
No better way to spend free time than with a book! Take a look at all our book selections for grades 1-12.
By P.D. Eastman: Are You My Mother? is the story about a hatchling bird. His mother, thinking her egg will stay in her nest where she left it, leaves her egg alone and flies off to find food. The baby bird hatches. He does not understand where his mother is so he goes to look for her.
By Cynthia Rylant: Henry names his puppy Mudge, and Mudge does not stay small. He grows to one hundred and eighty pounds, three feet tall, and becomes Henry's best friend. Henry used to be worried about bullies, tornadoes, or other scary things when he walked to school, but now he has Mudge to protect him.
By Thomas P. Lewis: Every day is the same for Pablo's father. Then one afternoon the ground growls, hisses smoke, and swallows up his plow. A volcano is erupting in the middle of his cornfield!
By Ron Roy: This series features three smart kids who solve crimes and mysteries. ... The kids are Dink Duncan, Josh Pinto, and Ruth Rose Hathaway. They are third graders and live near each other. They have hobbies and pets and parents, but what they love most is a good mystery.
By David A. Adler: A series of books following the exploits of a fifth-grade female detective named Jennifer "Cam" Jansen and her best friend Eric. ... The Cam Jansen character was based on an elementary school classmate of Adler's who was believed to have a photographic memory.
By Ursula K. LeGuin: Mrs. Jane Tabby can't explain why her four precious kittens were born with wings, but she's grateful that they are able to use their flying skills to soar away from the dangerous city slums where they were born. However, once the kittens escape the big city, they learn that country life can be just as difficult!
By Gail Carson Levine: Rani, Tinker Bell, and the fairy queen, Clarion, set off on a perilous quest to find a wand, a journey that takes them across an ocean, to the palace of the Great Wanded fairies. Many obstacles stand between the Never fairies and their desire for peace in Fairy Haven, not the least of which are their own secret dreams.
By Margery Sharp: Hidden from all eyes within the cold, cruel splendors of her Diamond Palace, the evil Duchess has kidnapped into her service a little girl known as Patience. As soon as she hears of Patience's dreadful fate, Miss Bianca, the fabulous Embassy mouse, determines upon her rescue.
By Betty Brock: “No. Flying in the House” is the story of a little girl who can kiss her elbow and, after a few false starts, can fly around the room —and comes to believe that part fairy is exactly what she is. She will be required to choose with which side, the human or the fairy, she will lead her life.
By N.D. Wilson: 100 Cupboards chronicles the fantastical journeys of Henry York, who discovers that the old Kansas farmhouse where he's been relegated to live harbors mysterious cupboards leading to worlds and dangers beyond his imagination.
By Lesley M. M. Bloom: Eleven-year-old Cornelia Englehart is the lonely, disaffected daughter of a world-famous concert pianist. Everywhere she goes, she disappears behind her mother's reputation, so she shuns social contact, erecting a wall of obfuscatory verbiage to shut down conversation and gain the privacy she thinks she craves.
By Wendelin Van Draanen: The series focuses on Sammy's adventures as an amateur sleuth. The books, which are narrated in the first-person perspective by Sammy, involve detective fiction as well as comedy. Sammy begins her adventures in the first book as a seventh-grader, and the series will end when she completes the eighth grade.
By Eva Ibbotson: Dial-a-Ghost is a 1996 children's novel written by Eva Ibbotson and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes. It is centered on an orphan named Oliver, who inherits Helton Hall, and whose cousins Frieda and Fulton Snodde-Brittle want to kill him because he is the rightful owner of Helton Hall.
By Roald Dahl: Ten-year-old Sophie is in for the adventure of a lifetime when she meets the Big Friendly Giant Naturally scared at first, the young girl soon realizes that the 24-foot behemoth is actually quite gentle and charming. As their friendship grows, Sophie's presence attracts the unwanted attention of Bloodbottler, Fleshlumpeater and other giants. After traveling to London, Sophie and the BFG must convince Queen Victoria to help them get rid of all the bad giants once and for all.
By Lynne Reid Banks: All the books revolve around a young boy, Omri, who discovers the powers of a magical cupboard. When plastic toys are locked in the cupboard, they become real, living beings, resulting in Omri befriending an 18th-century Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) chief named Little Bear.
By Lemony Snicket: After the three young Baudelaire siblings are left orphaned by a fire in their mansion, they are carted off to live with their distant relative, Count Olaf. Unfortunately, Olaf is a cruel, scheming man only after the inheritance that the eldest Baudelaire, Violet, is set to receive. The children escape and find shelter with their quirky Uncle Monty, subsequently, their phobic Aunt Josephine, but Olaf is never far behind.
By Robert Louis Stevenson: Betrayed by his Uncle, David finds himself kidnapped by Captain Hoseason, who plans to sell him into slavery in America. However the ship is blown off course and driven back towards Scotland where in the fog it strikes a small vessel. David is able to escape his captors and soon finds himself in the middle of the struggle between the Scottish Highlanders and the English government. David must fight for his life to collect his rightful inheritance.
By Margaret Peterson Haddix: The Shadow Children sequence is set in a country where the government has enforced strict population control laws in order to control overpopulation after environmental conditions have severely limited resources, particularly food.
By Blue Balliett: "Chasing Vermeer" is a fictional book that teaches young readers about art, writing, math, and history in a way that is fun and exciting. Through an art theft and other mysterious happenings, the main characters, Petra and Calder, become friends, grow to be more courageous, and solve an art crime.
By Neil Gaiman: While exploring her new home, a girl named Coraline, discoveres a secret door behind which lies an alternate world that closely mirrors her own but, in many ways, is better. She rejoices in her discovery, until Other Mother and the rest of her parallel family try to keep her there forever. Coraline must use all her resources and bravery to make it back to her own family and life.
By Eoin Colfer: Fletcher Moon has never been like other kids. For one thing, he has had to suffer the humiliating nickname "Half Moon" because of his short stature. But the real reason Fletcher is different is that ever since he was a baby, he's had a nose for sniffing out mysteries. After graduating at the top of his Internet class, he is officially certified as the youngest detective in the world.
By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: According to an old legend, a curse runs in the Baskerville family since the time of the English Civil War, when a Hugo Baskerville abducted and caused the death of a maiden on the moor, only to be killed in turn by a huge demonic hound.
By Agatha Christie: Agatha Christie began writing detective fiction while working as a nurse during World War I (1914–18). She began her debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1916 and published it after the end of the war, in 1920. The novel introduced Hercule Poirot, one of Christie's most enduring characters.
By Carolyn Meyer: Elizabeth Tudor's teenage and young adult years during the turbulent reigns of Edward and then Mary Tudor are hardly those of a fairy-tale princess. Her mother has been beheaded by Elizabeth's own father, Henry VIII; her jealous half sister, Mary, has her locked away in the Tower of London; and her only love interest betrays her in his own quest for the throne.
By Robert Louis Stevenson: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is a narrative about the complexities of science and the duplicity of human nature. Dr Jekyll is a kind, well-respected and intelligent scientist who meddles with the darker side of science, as he wants to bring out his 'second' nature.
By G.K. Chesterton: For the confessional, this humble, innocent little priest has gained a deep intuitive knowledge of the paradoxes of human nature. So when murder, mayhem, and mystery stalk smart society, only father Brown can be counted upon to discover the startling truth.
By Ray Bradbury: Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life. But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas ideas in books.
By Marissa Meyer: The Lunar Chronicles are futuristic retellings of classic fairy tales. In CINDER, a teenage cyborg (half human, half machine) must deal with a wicked stepmother,start a rebellion against the evil Queen Levana, and decide how she feels about a handsome prince.
By Kiera Cass: A group of impoverished girls compete for a chance to live amongst the wealthy, where a rebellion is brewing. For thirty-five girls, the Selection is the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to escape the life laid out for them since birth. To be swept up in a world of glittering crowns and priceless jewels.
The story of Victor Frankenstein and the monstrous creature he created has held readers spellbound ever since it was published two centuries ago. On the surface, it is a novel of tense and steadily mounting horror; but on a more profound level, it offers searching illumination of the human condition in its portrayal of a scientist who oversteps the bounds of conscience, and of a monster brought to life in an alien world, ever more desperately attempting to escape the torture of his solitude.