Review: Molly's Mystery

[Skittl1321]

Well, as much as I gushed about Kit's mystery, I wasn't fond of Molly's mystery.

First, the number of times they mentioned Camp Gowanigan to have some sort of continuity to her regular stories drove me crazy.

The plot was fine, and consistent. It moved along at a good pace, but there were no subplots like Kit's story. It was very one-dimensional. It was nice to meet the other characters in the story, and I laughed out loud at her Aunt's "I follow the railroad" joke because a real WASP told me the same thing.

As for the mystery- it was very predictable who "did it", but it still wasn't the kind of mystery where you were able to pick up clues to figure it out, instead I figured it out because so much blame was placed on the other guy by the characters it couldn't possibly be him.

Overall, the original Molly books are much better. It was a fine book- took me about 40 minutes to read, and I'm glad I did, but eh.

They didn't go into huge detail about the interment camps, but you might want to be available to your kids to talk about them. One thing I thought was kind of strange is how the Germans (and their German-American kids) said "but those are for the Japanese" I wonder if that was a real attitude towards Japanese Americans even from the Germans.

[moderator]

I like the mysteries, but one thing that was obvious to me was that they didn't have the same authors as the originals. Those writers sometimes made mistakes about the characters (Samantha's book very clearly states that Nellie has brown hair, for example), or tried too hard (as in the case of Molly, as you mentioned).

There was also a very big mistake in the non-fiction section in the back. At the time I read it I was doing a year's study (university courses) of the Holocaust and knew it to be wrong (one that might be apparent to most). AG was extremely nice in their response about the mistake, even grateful to have it pointed out, and said they were going to fix it in the next edition. (The old write-up said (I have to re-order the text so that it makes sense as a separated sentence): "Germany was . . . get[ting] rid of anyone who was not white and Christian.")

Do you have a new version of the book? I'd love to hear how the wording was changed!

<font color="#051E50" size="1">[ February 05, 2006 11:03 AM: Message edited by: Melissa ]</font>

[Skittl1321]

I must not have a new version (although I just got it recently, maybe they just don't sell quickly?)

It says, "But his ideas did appeal to some Americans who wanted the U.S. to get rid of anyone who was not white and Christian, as Germany was doing."

[moderator]

Yes, yikes, that's the same version. (I rearranged the wording so that it would make sense without the surrounding context.) I remember us talking about how inaccurate this statement was in the past, and really hope they did fix that.

<font color="#051E50" size="1">[ February 07, 2006 10:42 PM: Message edited by: Melissa ]</font>

[Skittl1321]

Well it might be an older version- I imagine more books are sold through bookstores than through AG.com. It just doesn't make sense to buy them there (unless you are placing a return or have a code) because most bookstores have discount programs- and no shipping!