They're On The Case

I never go anywhere without a book; they are my constant companion and my best friend (except for Xena).  My purses are on the large side so I can always carry at least one (or maybe two) book(s).  Books educate, reaffirm, entertain and enrich me and my life.  Opening their pages removes me from where I am to the realm created by the written words.

A few days ago I found myself unexpectedly sitting in a hospital emergency room...for two hours.  Within a matter of minutes I had taken Platypus Police Squad: The Frog Who Croaked (Walden Pond Press, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers) written and illustrated by Jarrett J. Krosoczka out of my handbag, opening the cover for the first time.  All the sights and sounds surrounding me faded away; a crime had been committed on the docks in the dead of night in a city familiar but unlike any I had ever known.

This is the city.  Kalamazoo City.  Population: 75,000. By day, it's a bright, vibrant metropolis, the kind of city where dreams come true. ...
But it is a different city once the sun goes down.  The criminal element, asleep by day, haunts certain dark corners at night. ...

With those sentences from the first page of the prologue, your attention has been captured.  Your sense of anticipation is heightened.  By the time the final thought has been read, an esteemed faculty member, Professor Hopkins, a frog of impeccable reputation, has vanished.

Apparently an illegal purchase of synthetic fish has gone awry; a duffel bag filled with the odorous critters is at the scene.  Why, you may ask, was a teacher down at the docks?  Why does his coat bear the tire tread marks of a car?

Rookie Detective Rick Zengo, still living at home with his parents in a rather affluent section of the city, arrives at Platypus Police Squad for his first day on the force.  His late grandfather Lieutenant Dailey's portrait hangs on the wall. He is a hero, having lost his life in taking down the biggest criminal at the time in the city, Frank Pandini, Sr., a diabolical panda if there ever was one.

His new partner is veteran Detective Corey O'Malley, whose physique shows his love of one donut or cupcake too many.  A family man, two sons, one in middle school, the other in high school, and a teenage daughter with a new boyfriend, living with his wife in a lower income, established residential area of the city, O'Malley is known for following procedures, slowly fitting the pieces of a case together.  He was part of the team that took Pandini, Sr. down.

Zengo's gut instinct tells him that Frank Pandini, Jr., philanthropist extraordinaire, savior of the city, is not all he purports to be.  It seems he has his "finger in every pie" in town; possibly the missing person case they have been assigned.  When an evening stake-out at Pandini's club, Bamboo, goes sour, Zengo and O'Malley are taken off the assignment and reduced to elementary school crossing-guard duty by an enraged Sergeant Plazinski.

Can the newly-formed duo put seemingly unimportant clues together to solve the separate but connected crimes?  Have they been served their last best root beer floats in the city?  Readers and the detectives find themselves surprised at the answers.  And the last four pages?  Let's just say...put your pedal to the metal, flip on the siren and put the light on the roof.  It's going to be a ride to remember.


In his debut chapter book, Jarrett J. Krosoczka has created a cast of characters with distinctive, memorable personalities; Zengo and O'Malley are a likable, admirable pair, old school clashing and collaborating with eagerness, their families are humorously normal, the sly reporter, a lizard, Derek Doherty is lurking and looking, the two loud-mouth, annoying detectives, Diaz and Lucinni, are a little short on brains, the gruff Sergeant Plazinski is sharp, quick to anger but also to praise, rolling with the circumstances and then there's Frank Pandini, Jr. and his lackeys who put on a good show but....  The plot unfolds through a fast-paced narrative, snappy dialogue and the atmospheric descriptions of place and time.  Readers are completely engaged through the listing of where the characters are and the exact hour and minute beneath each chapter designation.  Here are a couple of example passages.

Even during the daytime, the docks were dank and dreary.  Dockworkers carried crates off and on boats, and the air was filled with the sounds of distant foghorns.  Zengo wasn't used to this, having grown up in the heights, far away from the poorer areas on the east side of Kalamazoo City.  He shivered.  It seemed ten degrees colder by the water, not to mention the stench! It hit Zengo so hard in the face that he gagged.  It was the kind of stink that would linger on his clothes for days.

"Don't worry, rookie. Not everyone has forgotten." Something passed over O'Malley's face. "Oh, crud, this is our exit!"
Zengo clutched the passenger-side door as O'Malley veered across three lanes.  When the car finally straightened out, the skyscrapers in the side-view mirror receded as the sprawling upscale business complexes rose up ahead.
"Not sure who's a bigger threat to society there, partner!" said Zengo, straightening his shirt and jacket.
"Can it, rookie."


Krosoczka begins this book by illustrating opening and closing endpapers with the docks at night, the buildings of the city behind, the slightly wavy water in front, in blacks and grays.  The title pages cleverly display pertinent information on lighted billboards on building roofs.  Less than twenty-five two page spreads are without some type of visual done in tones of black and white; varying in size to enhance the text appropriately.  Each chapter begins with a full page illustration on the left.


Combining all the best elements from decades of mystery and detective literature and television Jarrett J. Krosoczka brings to middle grade reader in Platypus Police Squad: The Frog Who Croaked an action-packed first installment to what promises to be an exciting new series.  When these boomerang-carrying, crime-solving detectives are on the job no criminal is safe.  Readers (myself included) will be ready for the next episode as soon as the final page is turned.

Follow the link embedded in Krosoczka's name above to visit his website.  This link is to his Nerdy Book Club post, Penguins Are Done In This Town.  Access the Zengo and O'Malley Rookie Rules Activity Kit here.  If you want to read the first forty plus pages follow this link. Be sure to mark May 23, 2013 on your calendar for the virtual launch party; more details are here.

Riddles And Rhythms

Of all the large cities I've visited, north and south, east and west, the one I've enjoyed the most and returned to again and again is Chicago.  The history, architecture, museums, theaters, restaurants, parks,  libraries, big stores and small shops along the shore of Lake Michigan populated with people from all walks of life are interesting, entertaining and simply amazing.  Considering I'm happiest hiking the hilly forests of northern Michigan without a soul in sight, that's saying quite a bit.

When an author chooses to place their book in a setting familiar to a reader, there's an immediate connection, a sense of coming home.  In her first fiction book Blue Balliett selected her own community on the south side of Chicago, Hyde Park.  This title, Chasing Vermeer, earned her numerous awards two of which are the Edgar Award and the Agatha Award.

The other two books in this trilogy, The Wright 3 and The Calder Game are either set in Chicago or begin there with her cast of familiar characters.  A town in Michigan, Three Oaks, is the setting for her third book, The Danger Box (reviewed here). By now as a reader I have a vested interest in the books of Blue Balliett drawn to them first for the place in which the well-told stories unfold.  I was thrilled to find the setting of her fifth book, Hold Fast (Scholastic), back in the city of Chicago.

It was the bitterest, meanest, darkest, coldest winter in anyone's memory, even in one of the forgotten neighborhoods of Chicago.
Light and warmth seem gone for good; mountains of gray
snow and sheets of ice destroyed the geometry of sidewalk and
street.

On this day, in the heart of winter, a man disappears leaving behind his bicycle, groceries and a pocket notebook.  The man is Dashel Pearl, husband of Summer and father to eleven-year-old daughter, Early and Jubilation, a younger son. He is a man who loves words and books, a page at the Harold Washington, the public library in downtown Chicago.

Dreams, a love of the writing of Langston Hughes, and hope are the glue binding this family together.  When Dash begins cataloging books for an unknown buyer, the extra money is welcome.  This money for Dash's college education will help them realize their desire to live in their own house.  But now their small living quarters are no longer filled with laughter and plans for a brighter future.  Despair descends as the police tell their tale and leave the three minus one.

Inquiries made of the wrong people lead to masked intruders stealing all they own, destroying their tiny one room apartment.  Fearing for their lives, Sum, Early and Jubilation leave in the dead of night with nowhere to go but a shelter for the homeless.  It seems the definition of bad has become much worse for the three Pearls.

To add insult to injury the police are trying to implicate Dash in a larger crime rather than simply being missing.  An unsolved European diamond heist, smuggling and kidnapping swirl around the threesome as they attempt to adjust to their new circumstances.  It is eleven-year-old Early, a thinker, a lover of words and riddles like her father, who knows it is up to her to solve the mystery of  his disappearance.

Life at the shelter brings countless rules, crowded conditions, a new school for Early and an air of hopelessness into their world.  With grit and determination Early begins to gather available resources disregarding the taunts of classmates and the lack of support from the police using the assistance of her father's old high school teacher and a tutor at the shelter.  The hardest thing has become knowing who to trust.

Crooks and cons are lurking and listening.  Death is waiting in the wings.  More money than the Pearls can imagine is at stake.  And how does The First Book of Rhythms by Langston Hughes tie this all together?


The language used in telling this tale of the plight of the homeless, the plight of the Pearls and the peril facing them at the hands of a ring of criminals is brimming with realism. Every word, sentence, paragraph and chapter is strung together artfully and with purpose.  Chapter headings are single words; ice, click, crash, cling, clutch, circle, crimp, crack, chase, catch, cover, cast, click and ice.  Each is defined as a noun and a verb, at times with completely different meanings depending on the culture in which they are used, on the first page of the chapter.  For careful readers these words become clues.

Beautiful descriptions of place, characters' personalities and thoughts fill the pages of this story.  For this reason readers are immersed in the emotions, the tension, caused by each event as the action escalates.  Almost without being aware we watch, we listen, we dream, we think, we write and we plan with Early.  Here are a couple of many passages I highlighted with my ever-present sticky notes.

"What's a printing?" Early had asked.  She loved the way her father shared information; his tone always made a plain old fact feel like something special.

It was odd how quickly each Pearl learned that wishing aloud made everything worse.  Survival was a matter of adapting, of learning how to hide in plain sight.

Understanding what she meant, Sum sighed. "I guess I am.  Reading is a tool no one can take away. A million bad things may happen in life and it'll still be with you, like a flashlight that never needs a battery.  Reading can offer a crack of light on the blackest of nights.


After you've read the final page, the note and acknowledgements you will quickly hold this book and, with a speed which can only be noted as fast, begin to think of all the people who you believe will want to read this book.  The number will be considerable.  Hold Fast written by Blue Balliett is a timely volume speaking to readers on more than one level; a story of family, homelessness, mystery and the power of the human mind and spirit.

Be sure to visit Blue Balliett's website linked to her name above.  It's one of the better sites filled with information about all of her books with a special section for educators.  This is a link to the Scholastic website for Blue Balliett.  Here is a link to a recent interview in TimeOutChicagoKids about this title.

Enjoy this interview where Balliett speaks about why and how she writes.