The Ice Cream Scoop

When third grader Nancy Drew and her classmates are assigned a school project on food, they do their research by visiting their old favorite ice cream parlor as well as the shiny-new ice cream place in town. But when it turns out that strange things are happening at the latter, Nancy metaphorically puts on her detective cap to get to the bottom of things.

This chapter-book series brings the famous sleuth to a younger audience, but I felt like this particular entry wasn't as good as the others. It took a while for the mystery to really get going, which also meant Nancy was 'jumping the gun' a little by trying to investigate something that wasn't really anything without the additional incidents of sabotage. The reveal of the mystery was show more okay; it made sense enough and there were plenty of red herrings along the way.

Once again, Nancy and her friends are kind of the mean girls in the class. It's not as bad here as in a previous story, but they very much turn their collective noses up at the idea of being paired with a boy for their school project and often describe him with words like "gross." I think the book is leaning too heavily into the idea that children of this age think the opposite sex have 'cooties,' which is disappointing on so many levels, including that the traditional Nancy Drew books have always appealed to both female and male readers.

I don't know if it had to do with a required word count or something, but I also noticed that this book had many instances of describing what Nancy is wearing. It really doesn't matter to the story or character that Nancy is wearing jeans and a turquoise turtleneck in one day and changes into a different outfit the next day. It was just unnecessary and almost distracting in a way to keep including this information.

This book is also very much a product of its time with allusions to pay phones and other dated items. The illustrations add little to the story. While it was never an amazing series, it does seem like the law of diminishing returns is starting to apply to The Nancy Drew Notebooks. show less

"Kitty, Bess och George kan inte tänka sig något bättre: De ska få göra ett grupparbete om glass! Men när de börjar intervjua ägarna till stadens två glassbarer upptäcker de snart att något är på tok.
Glass-struten får en leverans på tio hinkar ananas- och papayaglass, som ingen har beställt. Och någon drar ur kontakten till frysen så att glass i stora mängder smälter bort. Flickorna inser att något skumt är på gång. Ska Kitty och hennes vänner lyckas lösa glass-mysteriet?"