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Kid Review: The Agatha Case Files: Welcome to Kittyville! By Paul Martin
About This Book:
Be a detective! Agatha is new to Kittyville, but that’s not stopping her from solving the mysteries that are taking place in town. Young readers are invited to join Agatha in her mission: look for clues, identify suspects, and come up with solutions! This illustrated interactive mystery with gatefold flaps is perfect for budding sleuths.
• Features 8 highly engaging mysteries with solutions
• Detailed illustrated scenes provide opportunities to develop observation skills
• Helps sharpen thinking and reasoning skills
The Agatha Case Files: Welcome to Kittyville is just right for young readers who love mysteries!
• Fun family read-aloud and activity books
• Books for children aged 5 and up
• Books for elementary school children
*Review Contributed By Karen Yingling, Staff Reviewer*
Fun, Interactive Mystery Book
There are eight cases altogether, including finding out why Dr. Poodle’s robots on the loose, investigating a missing painting, a mess at a museum, and a break in at the bank. Agatha also hones her skills at a carnival caper, circus antics, and even at the awards ceremony that the mayor holds for Agatha to thank her for solving so many of the town’s mysteries. Someone thinks she is not that great a detective and steals one of her presents, but of course Agatha is able to identify the culprit. Now that Agatha has several cases under her belt, I’m sure we will see more of her adventures.
Readers who are not quite ready for Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown mysteries will find Agatha’s cases a good warm up for those stories. I appreciated the instructions for what to look for, and was able to solve most of the cases, although I don’t have a lot of patience for figuring out mysteries. While some of the clues were obvious (a bird’s feather at the scene means the culprit is probably a bird), some of the other clues took a bit more thought (looking at the types of shoes characters were wearing or determining what tools were used in a break in). This would be a great way to encourage critical thinking in a young child.
This would make a great gift for a budding young detective along with a magnifying glass and fingerprint kit, as well as some more traditional early reader mysteries like Roy’s A to Z Mysteries, Kelly’s Ballpark Mysteries, Butler’s Kayla and King books, or Random House’s Time to Read The Boxcar Children series.