Rating: Not for me

I thought I would love it… Then I hated it…Then I finished a bit confused.  So this one just isn’t for me.

So why didn’t I like it?  Hard to put my finger on it.

Maybe I was disappointed that the reading level was way way way lower than other young chapter books; I felt fooled into getting essentially a picture book.  Sure, it has “chapters” but it calls itself a graphic novel chapter book, and that felt like a stretch.  (See example below.)

It’s not that there is a picture (see above) that suggests Paige has two dads. (That didn’t bother me, but I point it out for the conservatives on family structure.)

I think the reason I didn’t like it is that I thought it would be sort of like Encyclopedia Brown with fun, clever mysteries solved.  Instead it took on really tough issues with how we draw conclusions from evidence (but she calls them facts) and she calls her conclusions proven.  Then later she backs off things being proven saying later we might find facts that disprove something.  In the end she and her friend conceded to disagree on whether there is a werewolf in the neighborhood.  The final message is that different people might make different conclusions from the same facts and that’s ok.

Although I agree with some of the principles, I’m suspicious that the best parts won’t land with such a young reader audience. 

I commend the author for taking on a tough issue that is very relevant in our time, but the execution just doesn’t resonate well with me.