Kit's Mystery Party Game (American Girl Collection) [Misc. Supplies]

Jennifer Hirsch (Editor)

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Misc. Supplies
• Publisher: American Girl; Brdgm edition (June 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593690045
• ISBN-13: 978-1593690045
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 10 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,014,307 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Good but could've been a bit better, January 6, 2007

By 

Mom of Three (Milwaukee, WI United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Kit's Mystery Party Game (American Girl Collection) (Misc. Supplies)

We used this for our daughter's 8th birthday party. Every one of the kids I asked liked it and a couple yelled, "That was fun!" at the end. It got them thinking and didn't have them sitting for the whole time. It was set during the 1930's during the Depression. The mother can't find her pearl necklace and each person is a suspect. The girls work together to solve the mystery. There are even signs and clues you post up and leave around the house to facilitate the game. The game includes: invitations and envelopes to send to each person coming with a description of that character and how they may dress, scripts for each character, name tags, a pearl necklace card (we used a faux pearl necklace), the clues, the "hobo" signs the adult posts up.
I mistakenly assumed that the parts would be for all girls and looked online to find out if that was the case. I couldn't find that in the item description on Amazon or the AG site. There were 2 boy characters in the game. I prepped the girls for this and a couple volunteered to be the boys (just to be nice). This wasn't a big issue for me though. I think it's good for kids to learn to be flexible and encourage them to look at it as a challenge to be a great actress.
The one flaw the game had was that one character wasn't with the group for most of the game. I had this character be offstage close to the rest of the kids (as the game suggested) but I could tell she still felt excluded since she didn't get to go on the hunt looking for the clues. If I could do it over again, I would be that character (a homeless boy) and have a very mature girl be the mother (the game suggests an adult be the mother to keep the flow going).
Plan to read this a few weeks before using it so you have time to send out the invites and get everything ready.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kit's Mystery Party Game, March 7, 2006

By 

Mom of 4 (St. Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kit's Mystery Party Game (American Girl Collection) (Misc. Supplies)

The game was well written and fun for the girls. I played the adult role to move things along. The costume suggestions were easy to do and really added to the fun for the party. My only complaint was the game went much faster than suggested on the box. We were finished in 30 minutes instead of one hour! The girls that participated were 9-10 year olds. They wished it were longer as well or had a second mystery to solve.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good, not great. Girls need to all be able to read well., June 15, 2007

By 

third time mom (Naperville, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kit's Mystery Party Game (American Girl Collection) (Misc. Supplies)

This is cute. As a previous reviewer posted, one flaw is that one character is off-stage for a good deal of the script. Not so fun for most girls. Also, this is not the best game to choose if your daughter MUST invite a large crowd. THere are roles for 8 girls. If you have 16 girls and have them share a role it ends up being very little speaking. You can "create" roles, but then what about lines? Not much flexibility there unless you rewrite the entire script. Lastly, please remember your target audience. In order for this play to flow well, girls need to be strong readers. Many 6 year olds are big fans of the AG world and you might have a daughter who is a very strong reader but the chances of 7 of her friends that age being strong readers as well are low. By age 8 or 9 most kids are reading well enough to read new material smoothly with appropriate inflection/expression, understanding the story as they read it.