The Case of the Missing Carrot Cake.. and the OWS kids who were hot on its trail!

The Case of the Missing Carrot Cake by Robin Newman is a new beginning chapter book that introduces a pair of intrepid mouse detectives hot on the trail of a dastardly cake thief! In Kindergarten and First Grade we spent several fun weeks on this story which is full of clever puns and word play. Readers also have to pay close attention to the clues to figure out who might be guilty...

First we discussed the mystery genre and some specialized vocabulary words. To test students' skills as witnesses, I asked them what Ms. Bishop, our LLC Assistant, was wearing as they'd walked past her just a few minutes before. Here is a typical set of answers and a shot of what Ms. Bishop was actually wearing that day:

Next, we started reading the book, taking notes about the various suspects in our detective notebooks:

We discussed our suspicions with classmates and wrote down our conclusions before reading the final chapter and discovering whodunit... (You'll have to read the book yourself to see if this guess is correct!)

The real icing on the cake was our video chat with the author! Students were full of great questions and Robin gave us an interesting glimpse behind the scenes.

Here they react with stunned surprise upon discovering that the process of writing and publishing the book took 8 years! (Not the "couple of months" they had guessed!)

Not only did we have a lot of fun with The Case of the Missing Carrot Cake, but students learned the importance of paying close attention to information in texts and making predictions, as well as a better understanding of all the hard work that goes into being an author!