Customer Reviews

Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Dead Eagles: Book 12

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Adventure stories for young people are very popular and come in many forms. Some, like the Hardy Boys, have the main characters behaving like adults. They engage in fights with the bad guys, drive cars and boats and travel the world. The Encyclopedia Brown stories involve characters that are kids and do things that kids do in their neighborhoods.
This book is a collection of ten cases that Encyclopedia encounters, every one is described in only a few pages and Encyclopedia finds the flaw in the clues as they are presented. The depth of reasoning needed to solve the case and understand the solution is well within that of a late elementary school child and solutions to all of the cases are included at the end.
In a world where they are bombarded with passive entertainment, children need ways to test their logical reasoning skills. The Encyclopedia Brown cases are an excellent way to do that.

My husband and I are in our early 30's and we remember reading through the Encyclopedia Brown series in gradeschool. So, when our precocious 4-year-old son expressed an interest in mysteries, we bought him one of the series for Christmas.

He sped through it and was begging us for this partucular book for his 5th birthday. While the books are quite dated, he enjoys the close reading involved to figure out the solutions to the mysteries. He will sometimes read the solution to a story first, then read the case, but we've found that it has actually helped in enhancing reading comprehension.

I would recommend this book to parents and children - although realize up front that because it is very dated, your child may question the lack of technology in the book as well as the costs of some of the items mentioned in the cases, or even the geography of the city where hero Leroy Brown lives.

This edition featuring Idaville's most famous detective includes a few mysteries that are rather challenging to solve. The challenge arises largely because of how long ago Sobol wrote the stories; solutions require knowing some quaint traditions or niceties that are not really part of today's society. Though perhaps a bit weak in terms of the evidence truly incriminating the criminal, the stories are fun and well-told.

i think it was very tough to solve the cases. but very cool