Alvin Fernald, Master of a Thousand Disguises by Clifford B. Hicks

Rating: Needs Parent Supervision

Reading Level: Mid Elementary, Late Elementary

This book reminded me of Encyclopedia Brown: catching crooks with cleverness and solving puzzles.

Possible Concerns:

• Children Engaging with criminals. The kids don’t go to the police; I stead they play tricks on the criminals.
• Rudeness to a sibling. Alvin makes rotten faces behind his parents’ backs at his sister, and he nicknames her The Pest.
• Arguing with Mom when she asks him to help out with chores.
• Grimacing at green beans (calls them disgusting)
• Crossdressing. Alvin likes disguises so it’s an edgy disguise for him to be a girl. When he needs to go to the bathroom, he doesn’t know what to do… He can’t go into the men’s, and he doesn’t want to go into the ladies’.
• Yoga. Alvin’s younger sister does yoga.
• Grotesque, Halloween-ish costumes. The children dress up to confuse the criminals.
• One costume is a “savage Indian” who has feathers in his headless, no shirt, and screams wildly. I am no expert, but this may be offensive to Native Americans.

I prefer Encyclopedia Brown because you can, in theory, solve the puzzles. In this book, you didn’t have enough info until the reveal, so it wasn’t as satisfying.