The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour
The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour
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Perma-Bound Edition ©2009--
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Dell Yearling
Just the Series: Red Blazer Girls Vol. 1   

Series and Publisher: Red Blazer Girls   

Annotation: Catholic-schooled seventh-graders Sophie, Margaret, Rebecca, and Leigh Ann help an elderly neighbor solve a puzzle her father left for her estranged daughter twenty years ago.
Genre: [Mystery fiction]
 
Reviews: 7
Catalog Number: #33224
Format: Perma-Bound Edition
Special Formats: Inventory Sale Inventory Sale
Publisher: Dell Yearling
Copyright Date: 2009
Edition Date: 2009 Release Date: 07/13/10
Pages: 298 pages
ISBN: Publisher: 0-375-84303-5 Perma-Bound: 0-605-23183-4
ISBN 13: Publisher: 978-0-375-84303-7 Perma-Bound: 978-0-605-23183-2
Dewey: Fic
LCCN: 2008025254
Dimensions: 20 cm.
Language: English
Reviews:
Starred Review ALA Booklist (Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 CST 2009)

Starred Review A familiar heroine e girl detective ts a fresh look (red blazer!) in this delightful debut. Narrator Sophie and her pals Margaret and Rebecca go St. Veronica's, on the Upper East Side, where, one afternoon in English class, Sophie screams. She has seen a ghostly face in the church window across the courtyard. The woman is real and needs help. She is estranged from her daughter but has found something that could bring them together: a card, the first in a series that leads to a scavenger hunt wrapped in clues about religion, literature, and math, with a museum-quality treasure at its end. Beil, an English teacher, does a lot of juggling here. Besides the mystery, there's Sophie's incipient relationship with a boy friend who is morphing into a boyfriend, as well as her pals' family problems. The girls have to make sure others with more nefarious motives don't find the treasure before they do. The dialogue is fast and funny, the clues are often solvable (except, oy, the math), and even though a bunch of the adult characters are stereotypes, they work in the context of the mystery. More Red Blazer Girls, please.

Horn Book (Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2009)

A twenty-year-old birthday card leads seventh grader Sophie St. Pierre and her friends on a hunt for puzzles hidden in the church next to their all-girls' parochial school. As the sleuths solve each puzzle (tied to math, literature, or religion), they close in on a legendary ruby ring. Beil mixes light romance, family issues, and Great Expectations into this engaging mystery.

Kirkus Reviews

Clad in their red high-school blazers, three friends become amateur sleuths who decipher an intricate puzzle leading to the priceless Ring of Rocamadour. Dramatic Sophie, brainy Margaret and artistic Rebecca attend the upper school at St. Veronica's all-girls' school in Manhattan, where they encounter the elderly, eccentric Ms. Harriman who lives next door. Ms. Harriman enlists the sympathetic trio to solve an elaborate puzzle her archaeologist father created 20 years ago. As the girls discover, the clues refer to objects or places in St. Veronica's and challenge their knowledge of religion, classical languages, math, literature, philosophy and art. For each clue solved, another is provided. As the girls get closer to the ring, they realize they aren't alone in their quest. Sophie's chatty, melodramatic first-person, present-tense narration provides comic relief to the pseudo-gothic tone, inviting readers to crack the clues while the girls use their wits and spunk to pinpoint the ring's location. Three plucky, clever heroines and one very intriguing puzzle equal lighthearted adventure with a modern twist. Move over, Nancy Drew! (diagrams) (Mystery. 10-14)

School Library Journal (Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 CDT 2009)

Gr 5-8 Melodramatic Sophia St. Pierre, über-brainy Margaret Wrobel, and wisecracking Rebecca Chen are seventh graders at a Manhattan Catholic school. While sitting in her English class, Sophie spies someone in a window of the church next door, and she seems to be asking for help. The woman turns out to be a wealthy, elderly hippie who is trying to solve a 20-year-old puzzle. From that moment, these friends are embroiled in a mystery to find an ancient artifact, return it to its proper owner, and bring the villain to justice. The bright main characters have distinctive voices and unique personalities. Sophie is a witty narrator, whose asides, while sometimes distracting, are often as amusing as the long chapter titles. Along with sleuthing in the church, the girls are dealing with family and friend issues and first loves and preparing a Dickensian school skit. They get caught up in the engaging mystery, temporarily fall prey to misconceptions/misunderstandings, and proudly work out the teasing clues to find the treasure. This is a PG Da Vinci Code (Doubleday, 2003) clearly authored by a teacher (plenty of literary name-dropping) with a neat ending that is not immediately predictable. It's a clever way to combine some middle school math (graphs and grids included) with a fun mystery, great friends, and a bit of romance. Danielle Serra, Cliffside Park Public Library, NJ

Reviewing Agencies: - Find Other Reviewed Titles
Starred Review ALA Booklist (Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 CST 2009)
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Horn Book (Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2009)
Kirkus Reviews
School Library Journal (Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 CDT 2009)
Wilson's Children's Catalog
Wilson's Junior High Catalog
Word Count: 59,661
Reading Level: 4.4
Interest Level: 4-7
Accelerated Reader: reading level: 4.4 / points: 9.0 / quiz: 129817 / grade: Middle Grades
Reading Counts!: reading level:4.4 / points:15.0 / quiz:Q47103
Lexile: 720L
Guided Reading Level: W
Fountas & Pinnell: W
For as far back as I can remember, I have told everyone I know that I am going to be a writer. And it's not just some idle dream. I have been a busy girl, and my hard drive is bulging with the results of this ambition: a heaping assortment of almost-but-not-quite-finished short stories and at least three this-time-I'm-really-off-to-a-great-start-and-I-mean-it novels. Unfortunately, every single thing I have written--until now, that is--is fatally flawed. "Write what you know!" everyone told stubborn little me. Very good advice--that I completely ignored. Instead, I wrote and wrote, filling my stories to the brim with people and places I have spent my life reading about instead of the people and places that are my life. But all that changed the moment I looked out the window in Mr. Eliot's English class and screamed. Suddenly I had my very own story.  

My tale begins in September, my first month in the "upper school" at St. Veronica's, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I know, I know--it sounds snobby, like one of those schools in the movies or TV, but trust me, it's not. Believe me, I'm not rich, and my friends aren't either. St. V's is just a nice, ordinary all-girls' school that just happens to be in a pretty expensive neighborhood. Yes, we wear plaid skirts with our lovely red blazers, and yes, there are a few nuns running around the place, but there are no limos parked outside or helicopters on the roof or anything like that.  

We are just starting Great Expectations in Mr. Eliot's English class, taking turns reading aloud from the first chapter. So Leigh Ann Jaimes is reading. Someday, Leigh Ann, a very passionate reader, will win an Academy Award. When she reads, it's like one of those fabulous, a-star-is-born auditions for a Broadway play. Great Expectations, the "greatest novel ever written" per our Mr. Eliot, starts off with this spooky scene: as a cold early-evening fog hangs over a churchyard cemetery, the poor little orphan Pip is wandering near his parents' headstone. As Leigh Ann pours her heart into every word, I'm picturing the mist hanging over the graves, worn smooth by the passage of time. I feel the chilly, clammy air, hear the trees creaking and swaying in the wind, andso there I am, perched on the edge of my seat, when Leigh Ann reads: "'Hold your noise!' cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. 'Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!'"  

I gasp. Loudly.  

Leigh Ann, along with everyone else in the room, spins around to look at me.  

"Everything all right, Miss St. Pierre?" Mr. Eliot asks, peering over his glasses and trying to hold back a smile. Mr. Eliot is one of those teachers who is basically cool, but still a total geek--always making really corny jokes that only he gets. His first name is George, which explains a lot. Get it? George Eliot, like the novelist? Except that that George Eliot was really a woman named Mary Ann Evans. Oy.  

I blush--just a little. "I'm fine. Thanks for asking though." Always keep 'em guessing--that's what I say.  

He nods to Leigh Ann to continue.  

Across the room, my best friend Margaret Wrobel has this huge smile on her face. She mouths the words "deep breaths" at me, which is what she always tells me when I get too excited, or too scared, or too anxious, or too anything. I'm a very emotional person--Ijust don't seem to have that "whatever" gene. Everything matters in my world.  

Margaret reads next, and her version of Charles Dickens is flavored with a soupcon of a Polish accent, a remnant of the first seven years of her life in the suburbs of Warsaw. My eyes drift off for a moment, turning to the stained glass windows and the gray stone walls of St. Veronica's Church, separated from the school by a courtyard that is maybe twenty or thirty feet wide.  

And then I scream. And this time, I am at least as startled as everyone else in the room, with the possible exception of poor Mr. Eliot.  

"Sophie! For crying out loud. I know it's an exciting book, but please try to control yourself."  

"I'm sorry, Mr. Eliot, but I saw--" I point out the window at the church, but the thing that had been so scream-worthy is gone.  

"Yes?"  

"Nothing. I thought I saw something, but it must have just been a pigeon."  

"My gosh. What was this pigeon doing?"  

The bell rings (yay!) and I gather my books quietly and glance furtively out the window, hoping to get a second look at what I had seen for just the briefest flash.  

Margaret and I walk to the locker we share.  

"So, what was that all about?" she demands, after we get away from the crowd outside the room.  

"I saw something," I whisper.  

"Something like . . . dead people?" Margaret whispers back.  

Rebecca Chen sticks her head in between Margaret and me. "What's going on? Why are we whispering?"  

"Sophie says she saw something scary out the window during English class. She actually screamed."  

Rebecca's interest level increases immediately. "You screamed? In class? Cool."  

"I saw a face in the window. That little round one in the church. C'mon, I'll show you."  

We return to the now-empty Room 503 and re-create the scene.  

"I was sitting right here, and for just a split second, I saw it, plain as day. A woman's face, really pale, almost white, with long white hair."  

"You dozed off," says Rebecca. "It was a dream."  

"No, I was wide awake. You know how sometimes you're sitting there with the remote, and you're flipping through the channels as fast as you can, but every once in a while you see something--something you recognize, like a cute guy, or a scene from your favorite episode of Seinfeld or whatever--and even though you only saw it for like a split second, you still take it in? Well, that's what it was like."  

"Sophie, we're on the fifth floor," Margaret says. "That means we're forty feet up. That window is above us--it's probably just an attic or something. Sorry, but it's pretty unlikely that there was an old lady at that window."  

"Unless it was a ghost!" Rebecca is getting more excited by the minute. "Or someone trapped! Or being held in a secret room, like in The Man in the Iron Mask!"  

Margaret, the smartest person I know, can't resist an opportunity for a good literary allusion. "Or maybe she's in the church seeking sanctuary, like Quasimodo. You know, The Hunchback of Notre Dame."  

A couple of years ago, Margaret's dad salvaged a complete set of the Harvard Classics that some moron in their building had put out with the trash. Margaret has made it one of her missions in life to read all seventy volumes.   "Guys, I'm serious. I know you don't believe me, and I don't blame you, but I swear I saw her. And, uh, the weird part is, even though I only saw her for a second, I got the strangest feeling that she was trying to say something to me."  

"Like what?" Rebecca asks, eyes wide.  

"Like she needed help or something." I wait for them to scoff.

Excerpted from The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour by Michael D. Beil
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 perfect series for kids who loved THE LEMONADE WAR series and are ready for more mysteries!

Edgar Award Nominee for Best Mystery!

"With wit, cunning, snappy dialogue and superior math skills, The Red Blazer Girls represent the best of girl-detectives while still feeling relatable and real. Nancy Drew would be right at home with this group." -- Huffington Post's 15 Greatest Kid Detectives List

It all began with The Scream. And ended with . . . well, if we told you that, it wouldn’t be a mystery! But in between The Scream and The Very Surprising Ending, three friends find themselves on a scavenger hunt set up for a girl they never met, in search of a legendary ring reputed to grant wishes. Are these sleuths in school uniforms modern-day equivalents of Nancy, Harriet, or Scooby? Not really, they’re just three nice girls who decide to help out a weird lady, and end up hiding under tables, tackling word puzzles and geometry equations, and searching rather moldy storage rooms for “the stuff that dreams are made of” (that’s from an old detective movie). Oh, and there’s A Boy, who complicates things. As boys often do.

Intrigued? The Red Blazer Girls offers a fun, twisty adventure for those who love mystery, math (c’mon, admit it!), and a modest measure of mayhem.

Michael Beil, a New York City high school English teacher and life-long mystery fan, delivers a middle-grade caper that's perfect for middle-grade readers who have finished THE LEMONADE WAR series and are ready for more advanced mysteries!


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