Mike's Mystery (1960)

While the children are visting Mystery Ranch, their friend Mike is accused of starting a fire. They know Mike is innocent, but how do they prove it?

Reason for Reading: Next in the series. I am collecting the first original 19 books of this series.

Mike's Mystery could probably be said to have the first full blown mystery for the children to solve. All the previous books "mystery" was simply finding out the identity of mysterious strangers but this time we have a crime: arson, a witness: Mike's dog, and a couple of clues: a blue hat and a picture in a newspaper. We get a sense of real detecting going on for the children now. Mike's Mystery is also the first time that a book in this series is dependant on another in the series. This one is a direct sequel to book #4, Mystery Ranch, and will be enjoyed much better having read them in order. Also, one of the main characters returns from book #2, Surprise Island, and again this benefits readers who have read the books in order, otherwise many references to previous exploits will by lost upon them. The series is shaping up at this point into an ongoing adhesive collection, rather than just individual stories.

This story is typical fare for the series, much better than the last book and fun to see a proper mystery unravelling for the children this time. Exactly one year has passed since the last events happened and the Aldens return to the Mystery Ranch to find many changes have been made over the school year. A large cast of characters this time, though the majority of them have already been met in the past books so nobody new to really get to know. Benny and his friend Mike shine as the major characters in this book, even though everything is still much a group effort for the Alden children, focus is allowed to drift more often towards the littlest brother. A satisfying entry in the series. ( )

The Boxcar Children are spending the summer at Mystery Ranch. The excitement begins when they meet their old friend, Mike. When Mike is blamed for starting a fire, the Boxcar Children know he is innocent. Can they discover who's really doing it?

I stopped reading the Boxcar Children series after about the 90th book... it was just a bit much. But especially the first ten or twenty were absolutely fantastic. ( )

ISBN 0807551414 - The Boxcar Children series became a quick favorite for me when I discovered them - decades after their first publication! The language is a bit stilted, I assume that's partially because the books were written in the 1950s and 1960s and people simply spoke more correctly.

The children return to the ranch they own to visit Aunt Jane and see all the changes that have taken place in the past year. The first person they run into is Mike Wood, a boy they met on Surprise Island. Benny and Mike immediately take to bickering with one another again, but they're all on the same side when Mike's house is burned to the ground. It appears to be arson and a rumor starts that Mike was the cause of the fire, but the children know better - and they want to catch the man who did it before he causes even more destruction.

It's nice to see that the author has connected two previous books (Surprise Island (Boxcar Children) and Mystery Ranch (Boxcar Children)) to this one, for the continuity and because kids will enjoy recognizing characters beyond the Alden children. Illustrations by Dirk Gringhuis are nice, not spectacular. For funny, and one thing kids might miss, there's some astonishment that the kids are being picked up at the train station by Maggie, driving a car, as if cars - and women driving them! - are very unusual. The copyright is 1960, so they probably were less common, but it's still amusing. Mike's Mystery shares a message about helping others, as well as being fun entertainment. RL3, ages 7-12.

- AnnaLovesBooks ( )