Customer Reviews

Room One: A Mystery or Two

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

So it's time for silent reading in my fifth grade class and my students LOVE silent reading time. Most of them can't get enough of the books they're reading and can't wait to talk about them. But there's always the few who spend the entire silent reading time in the school library or at my personal library or trying to sneak away to the bathroom. They spend more time fidgeting than they do reading. How do you get those children to read? Well, one thing I have found that works is to put an Andrew Clements book in their hands.

Clements' books are simple and readable and according to most of my fifth graders, cool. Frindle, The Landry News, and Lunch Money are not filled with elementary student clichés. The characters aren't cheesy and my students don't find themselves saying "Come on, we're not like that" as is the case with many other books written for them. Clements' characters act and talk like real elementary students and are usually faced with real problems and this is an important part of his appeal. Room One is no exception.

One day while sixth grader Ted Hammond is delivering papers, he notices a mysterious face in an upstairs window of an old home, the Anderson's home. What spikes Ted's curiosity is that no one has lived in the Anderson house for two years. The house has sat empty and the windows have been boarded up. With nothing else going on in his small rural Nebraska town of Plattsford, Ted sets out to investigate.

I liked this book. I really did. It doesn't matter that I picked it up half-wanting, half-expecting a good mystery and didn't get one. Clements made me care about Ted, and April, and her family, and Mrs. Mitchell to the point where it didn't matter if the "mystery" to this story was solved for the reader less than halfway through the book. It's still a good story, and in the end, that's what children really want to read.

A few things I thoroughly enjoyed about the book . . . The Red Prairie Learning Center was fascinating to read about. The idea of a town, so against consolidating with surrounding communities that they've forced themselves to become what they have (a one room school with four 4th graders, one 6th grader, and four 8th graders) was an extremely interesting setting. I loved Mrs. Mitchell's character. She has many wonderful traits that only a teacher would be able to recognize. It didn't surprise me one bit to discover that Clements himself was a teacher at one point in time. No stereotypes here.

As long as you don't set your expectations too high, you'll find Room One a quick, easy, and entertaining read. The epilogue fills in the rest of the story nicely and provides adequate closure to the story surrounding April and her family. Having read most of Clements' other stories, seeing "A Mystery or Two" across this cover excited me some at the thought of a departure from his normal work, but please don't make the same mistake. This isn't so much a mystery as it is another fun (but somewhat serious), school story from Andrew Clements. And that's just fine by me.

Ted Hammond is one of only nine students in his one room school and the only 6th grader in Plattsford, Nebraska. The farming community is shrinking and the school is going to close because of the small enrollment. The loss of the school will be the final blow to the town.

Ted loves to read mysteries and the town librarian Mrs. Coughlin has introduced him to interlibrary loan. He reads 2-3 mysteries a week and excels at solving them before the last chapter.

One morning while delivering newspapers he think he sees a face in the window of an abandoned farmhouse on his route. Using the detective skills he has learned, Ted sets out to solve the mystery. While assembling clues, he discovers a family camping in the old house. Alexa a girl about his age asks him to keep her family's presence in the house a secret. He reluctantly agrees then devotes himself to their welfare by bringing them food.

Clements always writes with amazing candor and feeling about the adults in children's lives. He is clear eyed about the sometimes edgy relationship between teachers and their students. Ted confides in his teacher, Mrs. Mitchell about the family which puts her into an ethical dilemma. She does not want to break a promise to a student but she knows she must report the family.

This low key 162 page story is rounded out by an epilogue that tells "the rest of the story" in a conclusion that is very satisfying for the family and Ted's town.

There is much about Andrew Clements that impresses me. His website quotes him, "It is a privilege to write for children."

Longtime Clements reader and I have to say, this book is just horrible. It's completely lacking all of the charm we have come to know and love from all of his other books, and I don't understand where that disappeared to. Before you say, well, maybe you're just too old for the books now, I'd just like to say that I still read Frindle and the School Story and others, and they're still as good as when I first read them, if not better.
There's almost no character interaction or character development. It's simply boring.
The cultural references also threw me off, they're supposed to be timeless stories, not stories with iPods and Gameboys and wars in Iraq. They should be happening to anyone, anywhere.
I just didn't like the tone. It's nothing like his old works. If you're a fan of the classic Clements books, I strongly recommend you spare yourself a few minutes and pick another Andrew Clements book to read, cause this one's just not worth it.

I liked this book because it was a mystery and mysteries are my favorite books to read. I also liked it because it is by my favorite author, Andrew Clements. I think this book was one of his best because the boy tries to help people.

There's a boy named Ted and he delivers the newspaper to people. While he was delivering the papers he sees this girl in a window in a house that's been abandoned for about two years. So he goes to investigate the next day and he doesn't see any movement until he gets outside where the girl is waiting for him. What happens next? Read the book to find out.

I recommend this book to anyone because it's an outstanding book. I think anyone who likes Andrew Clements should read this book at least once.

"Room One: A Mystery or Two" is about a sixth-grade boy named Ted who loves nothing more than a good mystery. He attends school in a one-room schoolhouse in Nebraska and lately there have been a couple of big mysteries in town. With everyone moving away --- how is the school going to survive? And how will the farm that Ted lives on survive if the town becomes dead? But when Ted spots the face of a girl in an abandoned farmhouse, suddenly he has a real mystery to solve.

"Room One: A Mystery or Two" has some important things to say about current issues. It's also a nice story of kindness and caring.

At the end of the book, there's a note from Andrew Clements revealing some of the real-life sources from which he drew this book. The real-life connection helps to lend an authenticity to this story.

For me, "Room One: A Mystery or Two" was a good story, but perhaps not as great as some of Clements past stories. It's about a boy who doesn't really have any close friends, whereas in many of Clements' past books, the characters have had strong ties of friendship. I also enjoyed some of the humor in some of the past books, but there wasn't a great amount of it in this book. Still, this is another reasonably decent Andrew Clements story.

I thing that EVERYONE of Andrew Clements books is one of my favorite books but this one get higher that most of the other ones. It's about a newspaper boy who is delivering news paper's and then he bikes past a house that no one has lived in for a long time and he noticed some thing in the upstairs window! And if I tell you anymore it will give something away. So I defiantly Recomend this book to anyone that's looking for a really good realistic fiction/ Mystary book!

Room One is an interesting book. Although I didn't agree with the ending (I like happy endings), I enjoyed reading the ending the most because it was exciting.
Ted Hammond is living in a small town that might shut down soon. When he discovers a homeless family living in his neighbor's old abandoned farm house, he tries to help them as much as he can. But when his teacher sees him exiting the old farm, he has to make an unexpected partnership with her to keep the family from being discovered by a more unpleasant "friend" of the family. When the family runs away, Ted doesn't know what to think. Will Ted be able to find them before someone else does, or will the family get caught? I would recommend this book to boys and girls, ages 10-14.

Room One proved to me that I should never underestimate the power of Andrew Clements' writing. When I found out that this was a mystery in a small town and not a story set in a school, I thought that I might not enjoy it as much as Frindle or School Story before it. But I was wrong.

Room One is a wonderfully written, quasi-mystery. The main character is Ted Hammond. Ted is a likable, bright kid in an interesting small town in Nebraska. Ted is a Boy Scout, the town paper boy and a mystery lover to boot. When he sees a face in the window of the old Anderson house, he gets wrapped up in a real-life mystery of his own.

Clements' economy of words and clarity of description serve to keep this story suspenseful, believable and enjoyable all at the same time. I couldn't put the book down and was pleasingly satisfied with the outcome. The epilogue was also perfectly suited to the book.

I recommend this book to Clements fans and mystery fans alike. While not a skull and crossbones mystery, it is an interesting story about an average Joe taking on some detective work. If you are looking for a Nancy Drew, here-are-the-clues, figure-it-out type mystery then this book is not for you.

Ted Hammond is a boy who loves mystery books. He goes to a school with only one room and one teacher and three of four grades. Ted is the only one who is in sixth grade.
I think you should read this book because you have to think about it carefully. And you solve mysteries. Some mysteries that are going the right way go the wrong way at the end. Is the school going to stay open or not?

Centered on a very engaging sixth grader, this book seems aimed at about the third or fourth grade level. It isn't really a mystery, but is more about promises, duty and responsibility. The setting is realistic, dialogue is sound, motivations and actions make sense. The overall effect is low key and rather mild, but I would think it would be very satisfying for a younger reader.