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| Perma-Bound Edition ©2009 | -- |
| Publisher's Hardcover ©2009 | -- |
| Paperback ©2009 | -- |
Mistaken identity. Fiction.
Books and reading. Fiction.
Librarians. Fiction.
Police. Fiction.
Quilts. Fiction.
Twelve-year-old Steve Brixton loves detective stories. After picking up a library book full of the nation's secrets, he suddenly finds himself in the middle of a mystery, and everyone thinks he's the villain. The characters are a little one-note (Rex's digital illustrations help round them out), but the story's action and humor should propel reluctant readers.
School Library Journal (Mon Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2010)Gr 4-6 Aspiring detective Steve Brixton, 12, gets more than he bargained for when he becomes mixed up with crime-fighting and undercover operatives who are alsolibrarians! Steve, an avid reader, has been diligently studying The Bailey Brothers' Detective Handbook and has turned into quite a supersleuth. He is working on a social-studies project on early American needlework (definitely not his choice) at the library, and checks out An Illustrated History of American Quilting when a man holds a gun to his head. It seems that all books have coded information in their Library of Congress numbers for the Librarians, who are highly trained intelligence agents. This clandestine society of crime-fighters suspects Steve is working for the mysterious Mr. E., who sells America's secrets. They plan on charging him with treason if he does not come clean about his involvement with the villain and his knowledge about a missing historical quilt that has major information embroidered on it. Barnett's fast-moving plot is sure to hold readers' attention, and children will love Steve's ability to outsmart many of the adults in the story. Incorporating mistaken identities, kidnapping, and a secret underground society, this is a fun, humorous adventure. Mairead McInnes, Oakdale-Bohemia Middle School, NY
ALA Booklist (Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 2009)Meet Steve Brixton, who lists The Bailey Brothers' Detective Handbook at the top of the Fifty-nine Greatest Books of All Time, closely followed by the 58 volumes of the Bailey Brothers Mysteries, a Hardy Boys style series. Steve, an aspiring boy detective, stumbles into a mystery involving the Maguffin quilt, a priceless artifact hidden by its last guardian before his death and still missing. Playing with the tropes of the Stratemeyer mystery series, the book provides all their action and adventure but adds a level of humor that will sometimes have readers laughing out loud. Similarly, Rex's illustrations have a mid-twentieth-century look, and in an accomplished, deadpan manner, offer one of the book's funniest moments. And though librarians usually roll their eyes when a good-guy librarian character appears in a novel, they may find it hard to resist Barnett's over-the-top portrayal of the profession as an elite undercover force expert in intelligence, counterintelligence, Boolean searching, and hand-to-hand combat. A smart, amusing mystery, this promising first novel is a fine start for the Brixton Brothers series.
Horn Book (Thu Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2010)
Wilson's Children's Catalog
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
School Library Journal (Mon Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2010)
ALA Booklist (Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 2009)
America’s Favorite Supersleuths
STEVE BRIXTON, A.K.A. STEVE, was reading on his too-small bed. He was having trouble getting comfortable, and for a few good reasons. His feet were hanging off the edge. Bedsprings were poking his ribs. His sheets were full of cinnamon-graham-cracker crumbs. But the main reason Steve was uncomfortable was that he was lying on an old copy of the Guinness Book of World Records, which was 959 pages long, and which he had hidden under his mattress.
If for some reason you were looking under Steve’s mattress and found the Guinness Book of World Records, you’d probably think it was just an ordinary book. That was the point. Open it up and you’d see that Steve had cut an identical rectangle out from the middle of every one of its pages. Then he had pasted the pages together. It had taken over two weeks to finish, and Steve had developed an allergic reaction to the paste, but it was worth it. When Steve was done, the book had a secret compartment. It wasn’t just a book anymore. It was a top secret book-box. And inside that top secret book-box was Steve’s top secret notebook. And that top secret notebook was where Steve recorded all sorts of notes and observations, including, on page one, a list of the Fifty-Nine Greatest Books of All Time.
First on his list was a shiny red book called The Bailey Brothers’ Detective Handbook, written by MacArthur Bart. The handbook was packed with the Real Crime-Solving Tips and Tricks employed by Shawn and Kevin Bailey, a.k.a. America’s Favorite Teenage Supersleuths, a.k.a. the Bailey Brothers, in their never-ending fight against goons and baddies and criminals and crime. The Bailey Brothers, of course, were the heroes of the best detective stories of all time, the Bailey Brothers Mysteries. And their handbook told you everything they knew: what to look for at a crime scene (shoe prints, tire marks, and fingerprints), the ways to crack a safe (rip jobs, punch jobs, and old man jobs), and where to hide a top secret notebook (in a top secret book-box). Basically, The Bailey Brothers’ Detective Handbook told you how to do all the stuff that the Bailey Brothers were completely ace at.
The Bailey Brothers, of course, were the sons of world-famous detective Harris Bailey. They helped their dad solve his toughest cases, and they had all sorts of dangerous adventures, and these adventures were the subject of the fifty-eight shiny red volumes that made up the Bailey Brothers Mysteries, also written by MacArthur Bart. Numbers two through fifty-nine on Steve Brixton’s list of the Fifty-Nine Greatest Books of All Time were taken up by the Bailey Brothers Mysteries.
Steve had already read all the Bailey Brothers books. Most of them he had read twice. A few he’d read three times. His favorite Bailey Brothers mystery was whichever one he was reading at the time. That meant that right now, as Steve lay on his lumpy bed, his favorite book was Bailey Brothers #13: The Mystery of the Hidden Secret. Steve was finishing up chapter seventeen, which at the moment was his favorite chapter, and which ended like this:
“Jumping jackals!” dark-haired Shawn exclaimed, pointing to the back wall of the dusty old parlor. “Look, Kevin! That bookcase looks newer than the rest!”
“General George Washington!” his blond older brother cried out. “I think you’re right!” Kevin rubbed his chin and thought. “Hold on just a minute, Shawn. This mansion has been abandoned for years. Nobody lives here. So who would have built a new bookshelf?”
Shawn and Kevin grinned at each other. “The robbers!” they shouted in unison.
“Say, I’ll bet this bookshelf covers a secret passageway that leads to their hideout,” Shawn surmised.
“Which is where we’ll find the suitcase full of stolen loot!” Kevin cried.
The two sleuths crossed over to the wall and stood in front of the suspicious bookcase. Shawn thought quietly for a few seconds.
“I know! Let’s try to push the bookcase over,” Shawn suggested.
“Hey, it can’t be any harder than Coach Biltmore’s tackling practice,” joked athletic Kevin, who lettered in football and many other varsity sports.
“One, two, three, heave!” shouted Shawn. The boys threw their weight into the bookshelf, lifting with their legs to avoid back injuries. There was a loud crash as the bookshelf detached from the wall and toppled over. The dust cleared and revealed a long, dark hallway!
“I knew it!” whooped Shawn. “Let’s go!”
“Not so fast, kids,” said a strange voice. “You won’t be recoverin’ the loot that easy.”
Shawn and Kevin whirled around to see a shifty-eyed man limping toward them, his scarred face visible in the moonlight through the window.
The man was holding a knife!
That was where the chapter ended, and when Carol Brixton, a.k.a. Steve’s mom, called him downstairs to dinner.
© 2009 Adam Rex
Excerpted from The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity by Mac Barnett
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.
National treasures, criminal masterminds, and…secret agent librarians?
Steve Brixton wants to be a crime-busting detective—just like his favorite crime-busting detectives, the Bailey Brothers. Turns out, though, that real life is nothing like the stories.
When Steve borrows the wrong book from the library, he finds himself involved in a treasonous plot that pits him against helicopter-rappelling librarians, has him outwitting a gaggle of police, and sees him standing off against the mysterious Mr. E. And all his Bailey Brothers know-how isn’t helping at all!
Worst of all, his social studies report is due Monday, and Ms. Gilfeather will not give him an extension!