The Big Race Lace Case

November 15, 2019
Grades 1-3 In his hundredth caper (but series debut), Mack Rhino untangles a dastardly scheme. Someone has attempted to fix a race by stealing the laces out of all the contestants' shoes?except, oddly, those of Skunks McGee, who won last year's race by cheating but swears he's changed his stripes. In a sweet bit of investigative work, Mack compiles a list of events and clues that may seem unrelated at first glance but leave the detective smelling a rat . . . or, to be more precise, a skunk. The tale, told in short lines of big, well-leaded print generously interspersed with black-and-white cartoon illustrations, is capped with review questions and a vocabulary list of such useful words as evidence and humdinger that are, like everyone's proper name when first used, bolded in the text. West ties up loose ends with a final view of the stolen laces all woven into birds' nests. Readers ready for easy chapter books can rest assured that, when it comes to solving mysteries, Mack is the guy . . . or rhino.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)