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| Perma-Bound from Publisher's Hardcover ©2018 | -- |
| Paperback ©2019 | -- |
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Fiction.
Asperger's syndrome. Fiction.
Stealing. Fiction.
Brothers and sisters. Fiction.
Cousins. Fiction.
New York (N.Y.). Fiction.
Kate and Ted are visiting their cousin Salim, now in New York thanks to his mother's new job as a curator at the Guggenheim Museum. As in their first adventure, The London Eye Mystery? (2008), they are called upon to become detectives, here because a painting has been stolen and Salim's mother arrested. The book's narrator is 12-year-old Ted, described last time out as having a brain that "runs on a different operating system" (seemingly autism spectrum disorder); yet it's his ability to see patterns, indiscernible to most, that allows him, with Kate and Salim's help, to identify the real perpetrator. The previous book's author, Siobhan Dowd, died, leaving only this sequel's title; in an author's note, Stevens describes how she went about constructing this novel from three words. She's done an admirable job with the characters. Ted especially is his same quirky self, a boy both a participant in and an observer of his life. The mystery has a few creaky spots, but Stevens moves things along briskly. A welcome return for this dynamic trio.
Horn Book (Mon Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2019)The characters from deceased author Siobhan Dowd's The London Eye Mystery return to solve a painting theft from NYC's Guggenheim Museum. Twelve-year-old Ted teams up with his sister Kat and cousin Salim after Salim's curator mother is falsely accused. Ted's Asperger's--his need for routine, obsession with patterns, and difficulty interpreting facial expressions and idioms--infuses his narration and informs the mystery's progression.
Kirkus ReviewsA clever junior detective must solve an art heist in this New York City-set sequel to the late Siobhan Dowd's London Eye Mystery (2008).Twelve-year-old Ted Spark, his 14-year-old sister, Kat, and their mother, Faith, fly to the U.S. to visit Ted and Kat's cousin Salim and eccentric aunt Gloria. Tourism soon segues into investigation when a painting at the Guggenheim, where Aunt Gloria works, goes missing and she becomes the prime suspect. Although overwhelmed by the strange city and uncertain about his friendship with Kat and Salim, Ted uses his encyclopedic knowledge, keen observation skills, and appreciation for patterns to try and prove Aunt Gloria's innocence. Perplexed by figures of speech, Ted nonetheless embraces metaphors, relating his adventures through meteorology and Homer's Odyssey. Although never explicitly identified as such, Ted presents as someone on the autism spectrum—literal, unfiltered, routine-oriented—but Dowd and Stevens (Murder Is Bad Manners, 2015, etc.) depict him as neither a savant nor a saintly sufferer. Rather, Ted Spark has a "funny brain, which works on a different operating system than other people's," much like his fictional predecessors Sherlock Holmes and Encyclopedia Brown. Ted notices racial differences, such as Salim's brown skin, but he seems to adhere to the white default with respect to himself and the rest of the family.Fast-paced, suspenseful, but never scary, a middle-grade mystery with a singular voice and a welcome continuation of the Sparks' adventures. (Mystery. 8-12)
School Library Journal (Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 CDT 2018)Gr 4-6 Ted understands patterns but not people. Due to his ability to see details most people ignore, he was able to find his missing cousin Salim in the first book in this series, The London Eye Mystery , written by the late Siobhan Dowd. Aunt Gloria and Salim now live in New York. Aunt Gloria is a curator at the Guggenheim and has invited her younger sister Kat and Ted for a week's visit. Ted hates change and knows he will miss his father who remains in London; his dad is his explainer who tells him what idiomatic expressions mean and helps him navigate an often confusing world. The family goes to the museum when it is closed to the public and at that very moment smoke bombs are dropped and an expensive Kandinsky painting is stolen. The police arrest Aunt Gloria and everyone panics. Now it's up to Ted, Kat, and Salim to solve the mystery and clear Aunt Gloria's name. Through a process of deductive reasoning, they work through the list of suspects. Swift pacing and smartly integrated clues allow readers to make connections along with the characters. Stevens's portrayal of Ted, who is on the autism spectrum, is positive and empowering without being trite or falling prey to tropes. VERDICT A top mystery for middle grade readers. Lillian Hecker, Town of Pelham Public Library, NY
ALA Booklist (Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 CDT 2018)
Horn Book (Mon Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2019)
Kirkus Reviews
School Library Journal (Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 CDT 2018)
1
Patterns
Here are some facts about me.
My name is Ted Spark.
I am twelve years and 281 days old.
I have seven friends.
There are nine lies in the silver folder labeled my lies that I keep in my desk drawer.
I am going to be a meteorologist when I grow up, so I can help people when the weather goes wrong. This is something that will happen more and more in the future. The world is heating up because of increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This is causing the seas to rise, and weather to become more extreme and unpredictable. This is very interesting and also very concerning. I don't know why the rest of my family--Mum and Dad and my sister, Kat--are not as worried about this as I am.
It might have something to do with my funny brain, which works on a different operating system than other people's. It makes patterns like the weather very important to me, and makes me notice things that no one else could. I see the way things connect, and I connect things that other people do not seem able to. I am learning that there are even patterns in stories and myths and poetry. There are patterns everywhere you look.
Three months ago I solved the mystery of how my cousin Salim disappeared from a pod on the London Eye Ferris wheel while Kat and I were watching him. A man came up to us while we were queuing and offered us a free ticket, which Salim took. Salim got into the pod that went up at 11:32 a.m. on Monday, May 24, but when it came down again at 12:02 p.m., we did not see him get out. Mum and Dad and Aunt Gloria, who is Mum's sister and Salim's mum, thought that his disappearance was impossible. Even the police thought it was impossible.
But I knew that even though some things seem impossible, they always make sense once you understand them. For example, in the year 1700 there was an earthquake in America that caused a tsunami in Japan, 4,721 miles away. A tsunami is a huge wave. At that time, the Japanese people who were hit by it probably didn't even know that America existed, but the tsunami flattened their houses anyway. This is absolutely true, and it proves that the whole of history is a pattern, and everything is caused by something else.
When Salim disappeared, Kat and I came up with nine possible theories, and one of them had to be true. That is what I knew, and that is what Kat and I proved. We worked out which theory was correct, and we got Salim back, and then he and Aunt Gloria went to New York together, to a new weather system and a new life, and a new job for Aunt Gloria as a curator at the Guggenheim Museum (my encyclopedia says that a curator is someone who looks after paintings and pieces of art, and organizes exhibitions in art galleries). But we were still part of that life, and when Kat and Mum and I went to visit them during our summer holiday this year, the mystery of the London Eye turned out not to be the only mystery in our universe.
Fifteen days ago, on the first proper day of our holiday, a painting was stolen from the Guggenheim Museum.
When the painting was stolen, everyone kept saying that it was priceless. That was not correct. They should have said that it was worth $20 million in New York, which is £16.02 million if you are in London, where Kat and Mum and Dad and I live. (This is because of something called the exchange rate, which decides the number of dollars you can buy for a pound, or the other way round. The exchange rate isn't always the same, which I find very interesting.)
It was very difficult for me to understand how a painting could be worth so much. Unlike photographs, paintings are not always accurate or realistic. I can see why a photograph would be valuable, because it shows you what the photographer saw at the very moment the picture was taken. My cousin Salim loves photography, and his photographs helped us solve the mystery of his disappearance. When I look at his pictures, I can tell exactly how the world looked when he took them. It's like time travel. But paintings are not like that, and so at first I wasn't very interested in the stolen painting.
But then Aunt Gloria was blamed. The police thought that she had stolen it, and they tried to put her in prison. That would be bad for her, and also bad for Salim. Salim is my cousin and one of my seven friends, and so I knew that I had to help him by getting the painting back again, and proving that Aunt Gloria had not been the one to take it.
This is how I, and Kat and Salim, did it.
Excerpted from The Guggenheim Mystery by Robin Stevens
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
The adventure that began in Siobhan Dowd's popular and acclaimed novel The London Eye Mystery at long last continues with Ted, Kat, and their cousin Salim investigating a theft at the Guggenheim Museum that's been pinned on Salim's mother!
When Ted and his big sister, Kat, take a trip to New York to visit their cousin Salim and their aunt Gloria, they think they're prepared for big-city adventures. But when a famous painting is stolen from the Guggenheim Museum, where Aunt Gloria works, the surprises begin to mount faster than they could have anticipated. With the police looking at Aunt Gloria as the prime suspect, Ted, Kat, and Salim become sleuthing partners, following a trail of clues across NYC to prove her innocence--and to pinpoint the real thief. Ultimately, it comes down to Ted, whose brain works in its own very unique way, to find the key to the mystery.
"Fast-paced, suspenseful, but never scary, a middle-grade mystery with a singular voice and a welcome continuation of the Sparks' adventures." -- Kirkus Reviews
"Swift pacing and smartly integrated clues allow readers to make connections along with the characters. Stevens's portrayal of Ted, who is on the autism spectrum, is positive and empowering" -- School Library Journal
"A welcome return for this dynamic trio." -- Booklist