Another Halloween, another year of Nancy Drew reviews. Though granted, only one of the books I’m looking at really fits the spooky nature of the Halloween season. I am looking at three books including two from the Clue Crew series featuring Nancy, Bess, and George as eight year old kiddos. So, the mysteries are a bit more simplified but as I said last year when looking at these books for Halloween and the wintry holidays, they are good introductions to Nancy as well as using logic and deduction.
Cover
The cover is cute and does make it seem to be a bit more of a spookier tale than it is. There is a walking scarecrow in the book but that’s truly a subplot to the main mystery. While this is not a Halloween story, it is set close to halloween as Carson Drew mentions to little Nancy, Halloween is only three weeks away.
“Nancy did the math. Halloween was over three weeks away. Not only was it getting dark early—it was getting spooky.”
So, it’s more just a fun autumn story. Still, a cute cover and always enjoy looking at these images of a young Nancy.
The Plot
The plot is rather simple, Nancy’s class is chosen to compete to build a scarecrow for the department store, Darcy’s. Gotta love all works of fiction have names of stores that sound close to Macy’s. Just about everyone is excited except for one particular student. Young student Leanne is not excited as her parents own a smaller store across from Darcy’s.
“Nancy got it. Leanne’s parents owned Hudson’s Apparel, a smaller store across the street from Darcy’s.”
So yeah, Leanne’s parents’s can be viewed as the little man and Darcy’s, the big corporate shop. Perhaps I am overthinking a book about a bunch of eight year olds. Still, it does speak to how big shops gentrify and run mom and pop shops out of town. It also provides a motivation for why the scarecrow might’ve gone missing
As I mentioned, the class is set up to compete in a contest of designing a scarecrow and the best one will be displayed in the Darcy’s storefront. Nancy, Bess, and George design a scarecrow. The girls are all excited and mean girl, Deidre Shannon hires someone from a Project Runway type reality show to design the scarecrow for her.
Meet Suki Anderson!” Deirdre said. “Suki was a contestant on the TV show Catwalk Champ. She came in second place.”
This’ll be another big point but Deidre is more of a Red Herring much like how Fred always blamed the character of the same name in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. Bess had the scarecrow and left her out on the porch. Yes, the scarecrow is a girl named Autumn. One moment, it’s there and the next, it’s gone. So, the Clue Crew uses the weekend to find her and come across all types of people. There is a moment where they think the scarecrow might be walking or rather a different one, Jake McStuffings but turns out, it was someone else who was pretending to be a scarecrow as no one liked his scary stories.
I wanted everyone to think Jake was real,” Harvey explained. “I was sick of getting laughed at for my scary stories”.
There’s another reason to think someone might’ve taken Autumn. Even though, the mystery is easy to solve and I gave you a big hint as to who is behind it, I still don’t want to reveal how it ends as that takes the fun out of the mystery.
My Final Thoughts
Another cute little Nancy mystery, that’s perfect for this time of year. It’s a fun and simple mystery for the targeted audience that’ll have them following along as they help the girls figure out who took their scarecrow.
Join me next time for another mystery with little Nancy
The Pumpkin Patch Puzzle.
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