Review: Viva Durant and the Secret of the Silver Buttons

Title: Viva Durant and the Secret of the Silver Buttons
Creator: Ashli St. Armant, also known as Jazzy Ash
Narrator: Bahni Turpin
Publisher: Audible
Length: 4 hrs. 5 min.
Genre: Mystery

Summary: Viva Durant, New Orleans’ youngest detective is on a quest to solve a jazzy mystery involving hidden treasure, while exploring the city’s unique culture, history and music. This family-friendly Audible Original features original jazz music from the creator, Ashli St. Armant, and enthusiastic narration from world class Audible narrator, Bahni Turpin. Plucky 14-year-old Viva Durant heads to New Orleans every summer to spend time with her loving but stern grandmother, known as Gram. After Gram reads Viva an article in the local paper about a missing treasure related to the world-famous song, “Miss Mary Mack,” Viva traverses the Crescent City on an epic adventure to solve the mystery. Along the way she meets some of the city’s most colorful characters as her journey takes her to the French Quarter, a jazz club, a creepy cemetery, and even the circus.

Review: From the beginning, this sounded professional. This book comes with all of the bells and whistles one could possibly want. There are sound effects and the narrator does a great job with the various voices in a very natural sounding way. It's hard to believe it's one person.

The story itself is engaging. Viva is captivated by the story of the black dress and silver buttons. This leads her through the streets of New Orleans. Curious, I opened Google Maps and as I suspected, using street view, I could locate and see many of the places Viva was visiting. That's a bonus if readers think to do that. Of course the story was complete and the visuals weren't necessary, but it was certainly a fun activity.

Viva is 14, but to me seemed a bit younger. She is hesitant at the beginning and it's nice to see her becoming more and more independent and adventurous as the story progresses. The mystery has a few twists and turns and kept my attention. It comes in at just over four hours, so is not a big time investment.

If I had a complaint, it was Viva's way of creating a song to memorize facts. The songs were not meant to be very stunning musically, but they were a little annoying after a while. I also didn't understand why one would need memory devices when there is a cell phone handy that can photograph or even make an audio recording or store information in any number of ways. That was one part of the story that seemed to be a bit of a stumble.

Recommendation: This would be an excellent story for people looking for audiobooks that are interesting for a wide range of ages. It would work well for family trips. I feel like teenagers may not be the best audience as they would likely find some of this too contrived, but it's great for elementary ages. I think some adults might also enjoy it for the strolls through New Orleans if nothing else.

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Review: The Mystery of the Mischievous Marker

Title: The Mystery of the Mischievous Marker: A Mickey Rangel Mystery/El misterio del malvado marcador: Coleccion Mickey Rangel, detective privado
Author: René Saldaña, Jr.
Translator:  Carolina Villarroel
Publisher: Piñata Books
Pages: 38
Format: Paperback Bilingual Flip Book
Review Copy: Final version from publisher
Availability: On shelves now

Review: This is the third book in the Mickey Rangel series and it has convinced me that I need to find the other two. Mickey is a fifth grade detective. The book opens with Mickey sitting in the principal's office with no knowledge of why he is there. This creates quite a bit of stress for him as he wonders what she is going to say. He soon finds out that someone has been putting graffiti on school property and the principal would like Mickey to help her figure out who is doing it.

Mickey gets right to work to find out who has been leaving the graffiti messages. He's observant and also thinks up excellent questions as he digs for clues. I appreciated his sense of humor too. He tells about one Halloween when he dressed as a giant stool and his brother was a pigeon so they could be a stool pigeon. I am not certain that young readers will get that joke, but there are other reasons to smile.

Mickey also gets a little help in his work. There is a character he calls his "angel" that sometimes provides clues or prompts him with questions. This angel was in the other books too. I am curious to know if readers will ever find out the identity of this secretive angel.

I am always looking for interesting mystery books for younger readers. This is a series that would work well for readers who are ready to tackle a chapter book, but aren't ready for hundreds of pages. Another plus is that if you flip it one way, the text is in English and if you flip it the other, the text is in Spanish. I will be sure to find the other books in the series to read more about Mickey and his cases.

Review: Hide and Seek

Title: Hide and Seek (Capture the Flag #2)

Author: Kate Messner

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Pages: 256 pages

Audience: Ages 8-12

Genres: Mystery, Action/Adventure

Review Copy: E-ARC via NetGalley

Release Date: April 1, 2013

Summary from Goodreads: A fast-paced mystery from the author of CAPTURE THE FLAG!

José, Anna, and Henry are junior members of the secret Silver Jaguar Society, sworn to protect the world's most important artifacts. When they discover that the society's treasured Jaguar Cup has been replaced with a counterfeit, the trio and their families rush to the rain forests of Costa Rica in search of the real chalice. But when the trail runs dry, new mysteries emerge: Who can they trust? Is there a traitor in their midst? With danger at every turn, it will take more than they realize for José and his friends to recover the cup before it falls into the wrong hands.

My Review: Kate Messner has delivered another action-filled and intriguing mystery for her fans.  José, Anna and Henry find plenty of danger and excitement as they help the Silver Jaguar Society try to find the missing Jaguar Cup. In this installment, readers are treated to unusual animals like the glass frogs and bullet ants as the young investigators tromp through the Costa Rican jungle. She also provided a cave excursion. The walls have glowing crystal formations and it all sounds quite amazing.

In addition to a colorful and lush setting, Messner has just the right balance of suspense, humor and action throughout the book. There are chases through the jungle, snot frogs, a zip line, a "swinging bridge of death" and many other bits of fun to bring a chuckle and a smile to the faces of readers. For the mystery lovers, there is plenty to puzzle out and try to solve as the junior Silver Jaguars work to recover the cup and keep each other safe. There are also a few other threads of the story to untangle since the friends are keeping a few secrets from each other. Of course this leads to some difficulties between the friends, but that adds to the believability as they fuss at each other on occasion. What is a bit harder to believe is that their parents are once again not really in the picture during the story, but that isn't terribly distracting. So much is going on that it is just a blip.

Hide and Seek has much going for it and with the wonderful sense of place that Messner has created, this book surpasses the first in my eyes. Hide and Seek will be a welcome addition to any library.

Extras:

Hide and Seek Resources Pinterest Board

Costa Rica Wildlife