Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew 14 – The Zoo Crew

Carolyn Keene's Zoo Crew is the fourteenth Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew book, a mystery for 8 year olds about toys vanishing from the animals at zoo camp.

What happens

Nancy, Bess and George have signed up for River Heights Zoo Camp. They're Team Panda (of course), they'll be sleeping in the Discovery Den, and they'd very much like to earn junior zookeeper badges.

Their first job is making enrichment toys. These help the animals learn and play, like knotted ropes for the rabbits and painted balls for the seals. Nancy writes every single one down in her penguin notebook.

By the next morning some of them have gone. And now everybody thinks Team Panda can't count!

So who took them? Team Weasel were cross that they had to clean the petting zoo instead. Ethan, the owner's nine-year-old son, keeps inventing things nobody asked for (Totally Neat Kangaroo Feet, anyone?). And Marnie, who wants to be a vet, can't stop yawning at breakfast.

This is a lovely one for animal lovers. There are chimps being taught to lay a table, an eagle having its wing x-rayed and elephants whacking a peanut piñata. Plenty of real facts slip in too, like what nocturnal means and why a chimp isn't a monkey.

The three friends are as different as ever. George is a computer whiz who nearly went to computer camp instead. Bess packed all seven pairs of her shorts and is terrified of snakes, so you can guess what gets hidden in a duffel bag. It's only a toy, but her scream is very real.

Nancy is the one who notices the little things. A creaking door in the night, a banana skin where no banana should be and some very strange footprints in the mud all turn out to matter.

It's a good one for a reader who's just getting into mysteries. The chapters are short, the suspects are easy to keep track of and there's always something funny going on. The girls even plan an all-night stakeout and then fall asleep!

What to read next

If they'd like to see what the Clue Crew get up to next, Mail Madness is the fifteenth book. It's back-to-school shopping at the mall, and George dashes off to look at computers almost straight away.