Meet the Night Owl Detective Agency, best friends Wallace and Grace who live in the Great Woods and solve any mystery that comes their way (at least the ones that don’t interfere with their sleep). With bold text by Heather Alexander and bright illustrations by Laura Zarrin, this new young reader series is full of short chapters, new vocabulary, and a wealth of characters.
Wallace and Grace and the Cupcake Caper marks the series’ second book, however this series can be read in any order as they bring on new cases in every story. In Cupcake Caper, Wallace and Grace set out to find “whooo-done-it” when Monty the Chipmunk’s cupcake goes missing while he is sleeping or hibernating. Large words like hibernating, witness, and culprit, are italicized throughout the story along with an explanation by Wallace or Grace on its definition.
Alexander’s third book in the series, Wallace and Grace and the Lost Puppy, begins with a sad, dirty, and smelly lost puppy who got lost looking for an apple thief. The story begins at night and goes through sunrise, daytime, sunset, and back to night and the illustrations do a great job on helping the reader know what time of the day it is by showing sunrises and sunsets of purple, orange, and pink and night skies of velvet blue.
Some wordplay (whooo-done-it) and word designs are incorporated within the text and is comparable to the text style of Doreen Cronin’s Chicken Squad series. This text is complimented by Zarrin’s colorful illustrations which more often than not, tell more of the story than the text. For example, clues are sometimes given in some illustrations which have not yet been discovered by our Detectives, Wallace and Grace, encouraging the readers to become detectives themselves and not just rely on our owl protagonists.
Each story begins with Wallace and Grace in the middle of an activity. Cupcake Caper begins with a game of I Spy, while Lost Puppy shows the two in the midst of a scavenger hunt. Both novels close out their stories with either an end of the activity (finding all the scavenger hunt items) or picking up where they left off (I Spy-ing another thing).
Readers are able to take a look at the table of contents before each story to see all four chapters and their titles. This addition, plus the format of the text are perfect for readers transitioning into traditional fiction novels. In addition, the large, bold text and one or more illustration per page spread allow a nice balance between beginning and intermediate independent readers.
Early reader mystery series are a dime a dozen these days but Wallace and Grace have a lot to offer for the younger reader. I would give this to a child who is between Young Cam Janson and Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew, as well as readers who enjoy animal stories and science/nature. Whether this becomes a Geisel contestant or not, Wallace and Grace deserve a spot on your younger reader mystery series radar!
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