When my daughter was seven, she had a brief (and for me, very welcome) phase of being interested in mystery fiction. In general, her tastes lie more with speculative/fantasy fiction. I blame her father. Marinating a young child in Doctor Who has consequences.
But in Second Grade, when she homeschooled (briefly, because I am not made of the sterner stuff that dedicated home education requires), she was obsessed with Harriet the Spy and carried a notebook and pen on a string around her neck.
We spent a lot of time at the library, so much so that she was invited to sit in on a meeting to plan the new children’s section of the renovated library. Age seven or eight, she held her own with town council members and an avuncular local real estate who did her the courtesy of writing down her comments about creating an area for babies and toddlers where they could play with toys and not rip up books.
That year, she also devoured the very fun novels by Blue Balliett: Chasing Vermeer (2004), which was a long-time favourite, and the follow-ups, The Wright 3 and The Calder Game. And she went on to enjoy the mystery(ish) novels of the brilliant Rebecca Stead, starting with When You Reach Me.
Chasing Vermeer won a raft of prizes, and they’re very well deserved. The book is filled with puzzles for readers to solve as an intrepid young duo hunts down an art theft. Brett Helquist’s illustrations are richly detailed. It was because of this novel that, nearly a decade later, my daughter was interested in going to Amsterdam and seeing the Rijksmuseum Vermeer paintings. So that was some serious return on reading investment.
In my daughter’s Christmas stocking this year, I tucked a lovely little book by Katherine Rundell: Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise. I’m looking forward to reading it when she’s finished with it.
Rundell is a recent favourite of mine, although I found one recent novel too harrowing to read at bedtime. My favourite is Rooftoppers, which is also, sort of, a mystery. It’s amazing. Read Rooftoppers. Even if you are old and wise. It reminded me of the world Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novels conjured up, where the magical and the dreary exist side by side.
My own version of childhood mystery fiction fandom was emphatically less literary: the books by Balliett and Stead are intricately constructed and beautifully written.
In contrast, I devoured Bobbsey Twins books as soon as I started school and had daily library access. There are a hundred or so in total, although only 72 in the original series. I especially enjoyed the travel adventures of the two sets of fraternal twins. The characters are young and the mysteries are gentle and free of danger.
The same is largely true for a series I picked up around the age of eight, the less well known Happy Hollisters, about a family of five children whose adventures took them overseas in several of the books.
These were a gift from a friend of my mother’s, who found a cache of first editions at a garage sale.
Both series for young readers were explicitly didactic, but to the best of my recollection, the writing in the Happy Hollisters was a significant cut above The see-Flossie-eat-ice-cream style of The Bobbsey Twins. I’ve just ordered a few from Alibris, including my all-time-favourite, The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery of the Little Mermaid.
A confession: this yearning for the Happy Hollisters was prompted by booking a discounted trip to Copenhagen for next September.
Mystery novels often fill in as my travel guides.
When New York-area friends began moving to the Hudson Valley, I was delighted: Trixie Belden land!
Apparently, this is not helpful information to share with new residents.
But everything I know about, for instance, Ichabod Crane is courtesy of Trixie Belden #26, Mystery of the Headless Horseman. So I should maybe pick up Washington Irving one of these days.
The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction 
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