OK, so I think I am going to order the Encyclopedia Brown box set for her. But before I do, one last check to see if Nancy Drew might be better for her. Anyone read Nancy?
The Poe that I have read would be impossible for a typical 11 or 12 year old, and unpleasant for a non-bookworm 11th or 12th grader. But then, it has been a while since I read his stories.
Nancy Drew mysteries are book-length stories, with the emphasis on adventure; while Encyclopedia Brown mysteries are short stories, with the emphasis on the reader solving it. Both have smart, spunky girls, in the latter case EB’s friend Sally Kimball.
If your daughter likes Encyclopedia Brown and Sally Kimball, she may enjoy moving on into the Henry Reed books, with the teenage title character and his friend Midge Glass getting into various adventures.
Oslo Ostragoth writes:
> The Poe that I have read would be impossible for a typical 11 or 12 year old,
> and unpleasant for a non-bookworm 11th or 12th grader. But then, it has been
> a while since I read his stories.
It’s pretty common to put Poe short stories in, say, 10th grade literature books. Lots of smart 7th graders read Poe.
MilliCal is an above-average reader, but she hasn’t shown much interest in 19th century writers, to my chagrin. Your kids’ mileage may vary.
By the time I was her age, I’d been introduced to Holmes through The Red-Headed League, in an “Alfred Hitchcock” collection.
In fact, if you could find those Hitchcock anthologies, they’d make a pretty good introduction to Holmesian-type mysteries. I doubt if the grreat director ever contributed anything but his name to those, but I found them interesting reading, nonetheless. I’m talking here about the oversized hard-bound collections intended for kids – “Sinister Spies”, “Solve Them Yourself Mysteries”, etc., not the paperback collections for adults.
Ancient history, I know, but I’m not up on current kidfare mysteries.
If she’s on the young side (like 7 years old), she might enjoy the Basil of Baker Street books by Eve Titus. Basil is a mouse who solves crimes, and the whole thing is clearly modeled on the Sherlock Holmes universe. Only, with mice. They’re very cute.
IIRC, Poe varies. Some of his writing is fairly clear and straightforward, some is almost impenetrably wordy.
Growing up, I also had the Hitchcock Sinister Spies book (which includes the SH story “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” IIRC), and it’s excellent. There was another Hitchcock series about three preteen boys who hung out in a secret clubhouse hidden in a junkyard, and had various crime-solving adventures - it was pretty good. I forget the name.
I don’t know if all of the Jeremy Brett SH episodes are available on DVD, but probably most of them are. The NPR/PBS Signals catalog often features them. I often get them from our local library.
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Three Investigators .
I absolutely loved those books when I was a kid. Ate 'em like candy.
Ditto!