Weird Disappearances

August 1, 2017

Gr 4-7-These additions to the series appeal to its target audience by focusing on cases that have puzzled law enforcement and the public over the 20th century. Is money worth your life? It is possible the criminal masterminds profiled in Daring Heists thought so, as they all ended up in jail or on the run. Even the unsolved and notorious art theft from the Gardner Museum has left its main suspect jailed and the loot unrecovered. These are crimes that will have readers wanting to find out more about the perpetrators. In Weird Disappearances, McCarthy looks at a series of unresolved cases regarding missing people, including Amelia Earhart, Anastasia Romanov, and Solomon Northrup. Both titles present stories in a quick-flowing style with omniscient third-person narration as a means of appealing to reluctant readers. The titles would benefit from endnotes to help students further research people or events, especially those where McCarthy has postulated a conclusion. Each chapter is supplemented with a map and a sampling of facts about the time. VERDICT A supplemental choice where high-interest, true crime books are in demand.-Betsy Fraser, Calgary Public Library, Canada

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2017
Adventure is at the forefront of the Mystery & Mayhem series, which visitsand occasionally sensationalizesexciting true tales. Each volume contains five long-form stories that briefly touch on the event or person featured while also acknowledging other historical happenings of the period. Most of the people in Weird Disappearances, by contrast, will be more widely recognized: Amelia Earhart, Anastasia Romanov, and the Lost Colony of Roanoke are all profiled. Each chapter is followed by a What Else Was Happening? section that concisely contextualizes each event. The text is, for the most part, straightforward, only occasionally delving into dramatization, while the layout tends toward blandnessaside from a black-and-white map and time line at the start of each chapter, there are few illustrations. The true stories themselves, though, are thrilling enough to keep older readers engaged, and will likely spur further exploration.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)