Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew 11 – Ski School Sneak

Ski School Sneak by Carolyn Keene is a Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew mystery for 8 year olds, set on a beginners' ski slope with a trophy at stake.

What happens

Nancy, Bess and George are at Mount Fun Ski Lodge for the day with George's parents. None of the three has ever been on skis before that morning.

George keeps ending up on her back in the snow. She's fine about it. She'd rather be falling over with her friends than stuck at a car race with her brothers.

Bess, it turns out, is a natural. She stops neatly, she looks as if she's been at it for years, and at lunchtime she's given the trophy for Best New Skier.

That's where it starts to go wrong.

Jack has spent the whole morning telling anybody within earshot that he's brilliant at every sport going and that trophy is his. He stares at the ground while Bess collects it. Then he tells her it was a mistake and Mr Samuels will see.

And there's Gina, who hates skiing, hates the food, hates the cold, and disappears for twenty minutes without saying where she went.

Then everybody comes out from lunch to find the equipment shed wrecked. Skis knocked over, boots flung everywhere, helmets and poles all across the floor. Out comes Nancy's purple detective notebook, and the suspect list starts with the wind and the lodge dog.

The clock is the good bit. George's dad has just said the weather is turning and they'll have to drive home in about an hour.

Your reader gets everything they need to have a go themselves. The clues are all on the page, laid out plainly, and Nancy writes them down so nobody gets lost.

It's American, so there's a bunny slope, a rope pull and a lodge dining room, and a child may want a word about what a rope pull actually is.

The nicest thing here is how ordinary the fallings-out are. Somebody wanted a prize and didn't get it. Somebody else has been dragged somewhere they didn't want to go and is being horrible about it. Bess also loses a blue mitten, which may or may not matter.

Nobody is in danger at any point. It's cold noses, wet mittens and hurt feelings, which for a lot of eight year olds is exactly the right size of problem.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, Ticket Trouble takes the same three girls to a school fall festival, where the mystery starts at a ticket booth instead of a ski slope.