Calendar Mysteries – March Mischief

Ron Roy's March Mischief is a St Patrick's Day mystery for 5 year olds about a leprechaun statue that vanishes overnight.

What happens

It's the third Calendar Mysteries book. Every year the town of Green Lawn holds a contest where people dress up little leprechaun statues and the mayor picks a winner. The twins, Nate and Lucy have clubbed together to buy one.

Their idea? Turn it into Pal, the twins' basset hound. They give it floppy paper ears, a clay nose and a tube sock for a tail. Then Bradley pulls Pal's smelly old sweater over its head (Pal is NOT impressed about that).

The next morning the porch is empty. A croaky voice rings up to say Lucky O'Leary took it. But Lucky is a college student, and all the grown-ups say he's super honest. And it turns out they aren't the only ones missing a statue.

What follows is a very silly, very warm puzzle. There's a whole houseful of red-haired O'Learys, a police officer with a floppy moustache and a basset hound with a seriously good nose.

Lots of the fun is in the friends themselves. Brian can't see why anyone would want a smelly old leprechaun anyway. Brian and Nate are sure prisoners sleep on cement beds with spiders and rats. Lucy tells them they watch too much TV (and she's the one with the clever ideas). They tease each other like real friends do.

There's a police car with its siren going and Lucky gets taken off to the station, which might worry a very young reader. It's played for laughs though, and nobody is properly in trouble for long.

It's a lovely gentle mystery for newer readers. The sentences are short and the jokes keep coming all the way through. If your reader loves a good practical joke, there are LOTS of them here (and one funny little voice that nobody ever owns up to).

What to read next

Mr Paskey's Book Nook and Howard's barbershop both pop up on the walk around town. Dink, Josh and Ruth Rose have mysteries of their own as well. If your reader wants to see the same little town through the big kids' eyes, The Absent Author starts with an empty chair at a book signing in that very same bookshop.