Summary For one of his classes at school, Steve Brixton, is assigned a research paper on needle work. After going to the public library to research, Steve finds himself the main suspect in a case of national security. Librarians as secret service agents and teachers under suspicion keep Steve on his toes. Young Steve’s dream of becoming a detective becomes reality while trying to clear his name and solve the mystery of the missing quilt before librarians and police find him.
ImpressionsMy nephew insisted I read this. In understand why he likes this story. It is full of action and the character, Steve, is tenacious, funny, and smart. I think the part he like best about the story is the teacher is the bad guy and the librarians are the secret service agent. It is a good mystery for young mystery readers.
Reviews
Twelve-year-old Steve Brixton loves all 58 mysteries featuring the intrepid, smart and sporty Bailey Brothers, but his favorite book is The Bailey Brothers' Detective Handbook because Steve would like to be a detective when he grows up (or so he thinks). When his best friend Dana draws detectives out of the hat as a topic for a social studies paper while he draws early American needlework, Steve's depressed. When he's checking out his library's only book on historical quilts and ninjas descend upon him from the skylights, he's terrified and perplexed. Good thing he knows what a detective should do. He escapes, only to be captured by Librarian Secret Agents (who communicate using Library of Congress numbers). Suddenly everyone (including Mom's cop boyfriend) is treating Steve like a criminal, and if he can't find a cryptographic quilt before the bad guys, he'll be tried for treason! Barnett's coolly hysterical sendup of the Hardy Boys is peppered with excerpts from Bailey Brothers books and (too few of) Rex's tongue-in-cheek black-and-white illustrations and will entertain all who have outgrown the originals. Pray for sequels. (Fiction. 8-12)
The case of the case of
mistaken identity. (2009). Kirkus Reviews, (17) Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/917294049?accountid=7113
Meet Steve Brixton, who lists The Bailey Brothers' Detective Handbook at the top of "the Fifty-nine Greatest Books of All Time," closely followed by the 58 volumes of the Bailey Brothers Mysteries, a Hardy Boysstyle series. Steve, an aspiring boy detective, stumbles into a mystery involving the Maguffin quilt, a priceless artifact hidden by its last guardian before his death and still missing. Playing with the tropes of the Stratemeyer mystery series, the book provides all their action and adventure but adds a level of humor that will sometimes have readers laughing out loud. Similarly, Rex's illustrations have a m id- twentieth-century look, and in an accomplished, deadpan manner, offer one of the book's funniest moments. And though librarians usually roll their eyes when a good-guy librarian character appears in a novel, they may find it hard to resist Barnett's over-the-top portrayal of the profession as an elite undercover force "expert in intelligence, counterintelligence, Boolean searching, and hand-to-hand combat." A smart, amusing mystery, this promising first novel is a fine start for the Brixton Brothers series. -Carolyn Phelan
Phelan, C. (2009). The case
of the case of mistaken identity. The Booklist, 106(4), 63-63. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/235575910?accountid=7113
Suggestions
In
the book the super-secret item was a homemade quilt with symbols and hidden
meanings in the design. Have the
students draw a quilt with their own secret symbols and discuss what they mean.
References
Barnett, M. (2009). The
case of the case of mistaken identity . New York: Simon & Shuster Books
for Young Readers.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-X7v9jHMqAMI/UBIC1TdTX4I/AAAAAAAAAwk/gtEu1EqmilY/s1600/brixton-brothers.jpg
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