Customer Reviews

Dirk Bones and the Mystery of the Missing Books (I Can Read Book 1)

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My kindergartener loves spooky stories (takes after her mom), and as a beginning reader who is improving in fluency, I felt the Dirk Bones stories were perfect for her. She loves a good mystery and spooky story, and the two stories in this series were pitched right at her level. Though this is characterized as a Level One reader (containing simple sentences for new readers), I would actually characterize it as more of a Level two reader where the sentences are longer, and contain some complex vocabulary, for example "reporter", "misplaced", "librarian", "dripping", "lagoon", "sniffles", "slithered", "wriggled", "disappeared", "Creepus Crawler Talkus", etc. My daughter who is five-and-a-half years old was able to read this independently, but I did have to help her with several words like "librarian".

The story itself is engaging, and there are many illustrations throughout the book. The story features skeleton Dirk Bones, who is a reporter working in the town of Ghostly. He is investigating the mystery of disappearing books in the town, and uses clues to solve the mystery. Along the way, he encounters interesting characters such as Edgar Bleek (a friendly looking Frankenstein-like character), Else the librarian who looks like a witch, and Darlene, a creature from the lagoon. None of these creatures look scary enough to frighten young readers but create enough interest and suspense that will encourage children to read further and discover what happens. Highly recommended!