Araminta Spookie 3: Frognapped

Grade 2–4—Araminta Spookie feels that she is always blamed unfairly when something goes wrong or disappears, so when the father of her friend Wanda Wizzard tells her that she had better return his troupe of five acrobatic frogs, she decides to clear her name by setting up a detective agency to solve the frognapping. Although Spookie House has ghosts and at least one vampire (Uncle Drac, who likes to knit), the only character who seems to be up to anything even faintly sinister is Old Morris, a grouchy neighbor who suddenly turns his mushroom farm into a low-budget marine park. Black-and-white illustrations of cartoonlike characters with eyes on the sides of their faces appear throughout. The solution to the mystery is obvious halfway through the book. Frognapped, like the other "Araminta Spookie" books, seems designed for readers who like the idea of spooky things such as secret passages and ghosts, but do not want to read about anything even remotely scary. The humor is often so slight that it barely seems worth chuckling at. Purchase only if series fans are demanding more.—Walter Minkel, New York Public Library
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