Henry and Mudge Make a Crackin' Good Pair of Detectives

Lately, it seems like I've been catching all my favorite characters in the act of sleuthing. First it was Laura Ingalls sneaking about with her friend Andy trying to catch The Creeper of Walnut Grove. Then it was Piggley drawing inspiration from Barry Trotter, Private Eye, star of his favorite radio show on Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks. Now it's Henry and Mudge, a very recent addition to my canon of beloved characters, donning dark glasses and hats and trying to sniff out a good mystery.

In Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, the sixteenth book in a series of easy readers by Poppleton and Mr. Putter and Tabby author Cynthia Rylant and illustrator Sucie Stevenson, lively young Henry sees a spy kit and decides to buy it. He's thrilled to find a hat, sunglasses, a telescope, a magnifying glass and a secret code just ripe for the cracking. Time to solve a mystery! It's fun enough just pretending the search for clues, but when a mysterious code actually turns up, Henry and Mudge may just have stumbled upon their first big case!

The 35-page story is broken up into three sections: The Spy Kit, Code! and Crackers. What I really enjoy about this particular chronicle is the focus on what Mudge is thinking and how he manages to be a worthy accomplice to Henry without even meaning to: "'Try not to look like you're spying, Mudge,' Henry said. Mudge rolled around in a puddle. 'Hmm,' said Henry. 'Good job.'" And this: "'It's a message, Mudge,' Henry said. 'And we have to crack it.' Mudge wagged. He was good at cracking things. There were things all over the house that Mudge had cracked."

This last sentence is accompanied by two pages' worth of Stevenson's examples: a slashed screen door, a broken heel, a shattered alarm clock, a splintered case and a pair of mangled bath toys. As always, her cartoonish illustrations serve Rylant's prose well, and her pictures of Mudge drooling are especially amusing. Though Henry's parents don't appear in this volume, Henry and Mudge have plenty of fun on their own, and they even get to meet a couple new friends in the process.

Young readers with an interest in the mysterious - and who hasn't ever wanted to be a spy at one time or another? - will get a kick out of this tail-wagging good tale.