I am still working on my #MustReadin2018 reading challenge as well as the reading challenge I created with my Children’s Literature students, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for just one more. My Children’s Literature students alerted me to a glaring book gap in my own reading life: mysteries.
They kept asking for recommendations, and I kept hemming and hawing and muttering about Cam Jansen and Encyclopedia Brown and handing them Hoot or The Sasquatch Escape or The Great Greene Heist. Normally I can instantly rattle off 10 or 12 titles for a given recommendation request, and usually I can go right to my shelf and gather at least half of those books to put right into a student’s hands.
At first I thought this gap was because I don’t read mysteries. But when I look at a list of popular mystery novels for kids, I see that I’ve read plenty–certainly enough to recommend. I just didn’t like them very much. Too much plot and not enough focus on character change, development of setting, and crafting pretty sentences is my guess as to why they aren’t my favorite kind of reading.
I also see that the vast majority of titles on these lists are by white authors about mostly white characters. In fact, in my first search for children’s and YA mystery novels, nearly every list I found was 90-100% white authors/white characters, and that is a major turn-off for me as a reader. No wonder I’ve been avoiding mystery!
So I dug a little deeper, and the Internet did not disappoint. I had been feeling like this was a dutiful book gap challenge–one I should pursue but I didn’t have much readerly excitement about it. But after compiling this incredible list of mysteries, I can’t wait to get started. I certainly don’t plan to read all of these books this summer, but I will try to read at least 10. I have tried to emphasize #ownvoices mysteries, though not all of these titles qualify.
What other books should I add to my list?
Mind the Gap Photo CC-BY Pommiebastards
the dirigible plum 
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