The Westing Game

This classic award winning mystery for tweens still captures the attention of modern audiences after 30 years in print. The story begins with an unusual group of people being offered apartments in a prestigious lake side apartment building. After their neighbor, town legend, and local millionaire Sam Westing is murdered in his own home, a group of unlikely heirs are summoned together for the reading of his will. In order to collect their inheritance they must first solve the mystery of his death and find his killer. All of the sixteen  gathered are potential killers and potential heirs to the Westing fortune- they are divided into groups of two and given different clues to the mystery... two words.

None of the heirs are who they seem and through the process of solving the mystery of Sam Westing's death, each person learns more about their neighbors than they had wanted to know. As the story unravels, it appears that one person is the killer, and then the next, until everyone looks guilty except the young, innocent, Turtle Wexler. The cast of characters is diverse and the mystery will keep young readers engaged. Readers will make guesses about the heart of the mystery and will disagree with the narrator, gasp when surprising facts are revealed, and never guess how the story ends.

Raskin, Ellen. (1978). The Westing Game. New York: Dutton. 185 pages. ISBN 978-0-142-40120-0.

Ages 10+
Rating: Outstanding
Newberry Winner 1979

The Red Blazer Girls #1: The Ring of Rocamadour

Nancy Drew hasn't got a thing on the Red Blazer Girls. Yes, she has money and resources, but the Red Blazer girls have Margaret, the human computer and smartest girl at St. Veronica's. When Sophie sees a ghost in a window of the church across from their school and screams during English class she convinces her friends Margaret and Rebecca to help her investigate. What they find is a mystery, indeed- a woman in need of some assistance in solving a mystery thirty years in the making. The mystery begins with an inscription in a card the woman (Ms. Harraman) found in her library. The card was written to her daughter Caroline as a gift from her grandfather and contains a clue that will lead to many others and finally to her gift- a rare and precious artifact. If the girls of St. Veronica's can follow the clues and solve the puzzle, then they can help and old woman make amends with her adult daughter. Fans of Nancy Drew will be pleased with the fast paced story line and interesting mysteries to be solved. The narrator, Sophie urges readers to figure out the word puzzles and math problems before continuing in their reading giving the story a conversational tone.


Biel, Michael, D. (2009). The Red Blazer Girls #1: The Ring of Rocamadour. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 299 p. ISBN: 9780375843037.

Ages 10-12
Rating: High Additional