Edgar Allan's Official Crime Investigation Notebook (review)

"All my life I've been waiting for something like this to happen," Edgar Allan writes in his newly started Crime Investigation Notebook. The long-awaited event in question is crime: someone has just stolen the class goldfish from his fifth-grade classroom and Edgar, a kid who longs to be good at something, is determined to catch the thief. Interspersed with the third-person narration are selections from Edgar's notebook: clues, observations, interview notes, and the occasional poetry assignment. In the process of working through the details of the crime, unexpected twists lead to surprising new friendships for Edgar, and it becomes apparent that what he has longed for most of all is camaraderie. While there is enough of a mystery plot here to satisfy genre fans, this is ultimately a story about friendship, and Amato is particularly adept at developing strong characterizations of a diverse group of kids without delving into stereotypes. As with the author's Please Write in This Book (BCCB 3/07), this offers lively classroom banter, well-constructed characterizations, a credible school setting, and the effective use of notebook material to convey characters' thoughts. Edgar is an extremely appealing protagonist, sweet, determined, and tremendously earnest, and readers can't help but root for him as he haphazardly attempts to track down the thief. In the end, the mystery is solved, but more importantly, a classroom community is created.