Who doesn’t love a good treasure hunt? In order for Brian, Bradley, Lucy, and Nate to claim their treasure, they must first solve a mystery.
Summary: Ron Roy, author of the A to Z Mysteries series, has created a new mystery series around the calendar months featuring the younger siblings of the A to Z Mystery characters. In April Adventures, Brian, Bradley, Lucy, and Nate have a sleep-over the weekend of Easter. They are awakened in the early hours of Saturday morning with a mystery. Each of them find a plastic Easter egg near their head with a note inside placed there by a shadowy figure Bradley saw walking out of the room. Each egg has an instruction to follow that leads them on a treasure hunt beginning in the park. If they can find twelve plastic eggs and four real ones that are painted gold, they will get the treasure that waits for them. They figure out who hid the eggs, but can’t find the golden eggs. They come up with all kinds of possibilities as to what happened to the golden eggs, but they can’t claim their treasure until they find them.
Qualitative Analysis: The text of this book is comfortable and easy to follow. The main idea is explicitly stated at the beginning of the reading when it is discovered that the characters are going to engage in a treasure hunt. The genres of this book, realistic and mystery, are familiar to the reader and the text is consistent with the rules of these genres. It is organized in a chronological order over the span of about 24 hours. The story is told in a third-person narration. The text features include a table of contents at the beginning of the book. Each chapter begins with a chapter number, a chapter title in a large bold text, and a drawing of some Easter eggs with one opened with candy spilling out. The text throughout is a large font that makes it easy for beginning readers to see well. The notes that are found in the eggs are written in an all capital letter text so that the reader can clearly see what the note says as well as words when two of the characters yell, “Bees!” Occasionally, there are italicized words, showing emphasis, such as the words “Do snapping turtles hiss?” The illustrations by John Steven Gurney look like ink drawings with shadowing. Some of the illustrations take up the entire page with some flowing onto the next and some are smaller with text above or below the picture. The language closely adheres to the reader’s linguistic base. There is no need for background, cultural, or prior knowledge for the reader to comprehend and enjoy this book.
Genre and/or Subject Area: Fiction, Mystery, Realistic
Age or Interest Level: Grades K-3
Reading Level: Lexile RL: 470L , Accelerated Reader RL: 3.0 , FLR: 2.4
Series Information: Calendar Mysteries
Personal thoughts: I liked this book and believe others will too. Ron Roy is a well-known author in our school library and the younger readers enjoy reading his A to Z Mystery books and well as the Calendar Mysteries.
Bibliographic Information: Roy, R. (2010), April Adventures, New York: Random House
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