I’d been bugging my kids for weeks to read The London Eye Mystery. And then, while child #3 sat in the barber shop chair, I held the novel for him. It’s a small, squarish book. I’m supposed to be looking at my phone less, so I read.
The pages turned quickly. And I giggled. Fortunately, no one in the barber shop seemed to notice, especially not my children. Kids #1, 2 and 4 all had their noses in books. (Hurrah!)
An Interesting Character
The London Eye Mystery is told from the unusual prospective of Ted. He suffers from a “syndrome”, probably Asperger’s, although nobody ever comes out and says that. Ted explains that his brain “runs on a different operating system.” His issues? He takes words literally, has trouble reading other people’s emotions, shakes out his hand a lot, and is obsessed with the weather.
Here’s an example of his literal thinking, one that made me giggle:
It was like the time I’d asked why footballers were still being kept as slaves when slavery had been abolished, after a newsreader announced that a Manchester United star had been bought by another club for twelve million pounds.
The cool thing about The London Eye Mystery is that Ted’s unusual perspective on the world actually helps him solve the case when the police and his sister cannot. He puts all the pieces together by looking at the clues differently:
I remembered a picture Kat had once shown me of a waterfall. Only, the way it was painted, it looked as if the water was flowing upwards. Perhaps this was a clue to Salim’s disappearance. Perhaps Kat and I were looking at things the wrong way up, or the wrong way round.
An Enjoyable Mystery
Here’s what happens. Kat and Ted take their cousin Salim into London to ride The London Eye, the largest observation wheel ever built. A mysterious man offers Salim a ticket, and he takes it, disappearing into one of the pods on the “giant bicycle wheel in the sky.” Thirty minutes later, when the pod comes back around, Kat and Ted watch for their cousin to get out. But he never does.
Much like Sherlock Holmes, Ted doesn’t reveal how he’s pulled the clues together until the end of the story. He drops hints along the way, but I was too dense to notice. Maybe if I read more mystery I could have seen what was coming.
Besides having all the necessary components for kid lit sleuthing,The London Eye Mystery also touches on the importance of family and the difficulties of communicating well with family members, whether you have Asperger’s Syndrome or not!
Recommendation
All three of my kids (aged 9-13) who read The London Eye Mystery enjoyed it. (The youngest didn’t read it because he’s just in first grade and is plowing his way through The Magic Tree House series.) There’s nothing scary, and yet tension moves the plot along. It also gives kids insight into people who are “different.” Although Ted has his quirks, he wants to help, and he ends up a hero. That’s a character every kid can relate to.
Soon, I hope to tackle Colin Fischer, which is about an older kid with Asperger’s who solves a mystery at his high school.
Can you recommend other books about kids with disabilities or other kid lit mysteries?
Thanks for stopping by!
Julia
Oh my, it has been a really long time since I thought about kid-lit mysteries. When our youngest was having a really hard time reading, we bought the whole Encyclopedia Brown series. Luckily, he liked them enough to plow through. He is now 44 years old and has developed into a reader of novels and more importantly a reader of necessary manuals and other written documents for his job. I raised two life long readers. Yea!
Well, my family rode The London Eye this summer, and I do have a daughter aged 13. This mystery sounds like it might be for younger students, but I’ll definitely check it out!
You should, especially since you were there! How fun. Ted’s older sister Kat is about 13- so I bet she would give your daughter a character to relate to.
Julia, I’m going to dig up all of these great recommendations in a few years when Bean starts reading on her own!
Hi Julia,
I loved the London Eye Mystery for all the reasons you mentioned. I have it in my classroom and recommend it highly.
I just finished Mockingbird by Kathryn Erksine and Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper. Each is told from the perspective of a child with different abilities. They are quite popular with my fourth graders this year.
Thanks for the suggestions, Mary. My daughter read and enjoyed Mockingbird, but I’ve never heard of Out of My Mind- I’m going to add that to the Goodreads TBR list.