Does your child enjoy reading and solving easy puzzles? Are you looking forward to fostering detective skills in your child? If you have a budding detective in the house, you are in the right place! Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series happens to be one of the best mystery book series to introduce your child to mystery fiction.
Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series
The Clue Crew series caters to the age group of 8–14-year-olds and is appropriate and easy to read. There are 40 books under this series, which tackle a variety of mysteries. Nancy, who is the protagonist, along with her best friends Bess Marvin and George Fayne team up to solve a series of unusual mysteries that take place in River Heights.
Here’s a fun fact about Nancy Drew Series
The books published in the Nancy Drew series are believed to be ghost-written by multiple authors and published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. The author of Hardy boys, Edward Stratemeyer headed this publishing house. Nancy Drew is a fictional detective character written under the pseudonym, Carolyn Keene. Nancy Drew is often considered as the female counterpart of the Hardy Boys and has had multiple collaborations with them.
Why should you read Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series?
It is often suggested that parents should encourage their children to read mystery novels. Mystery stories hide tiny details, often making the child wonder why, while holding onto the child’s curiosity until the end. In addition, it encourages them to read more, helps them sharpen their logical thinking skills and deductive skills. Mystery stories help the child pay attention to the finer details in books as well as in life. The Clue Crew series could also be used by Parents as a sneaky bedtime story!
Based on parents’ reviews, a majority of them seemed pleased with the contents of the Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series. Initially they felt that a mystery book could be on the heavier side, but they were relieved when the clues, suspect and the situation was light-hearted and sometimes a misunderstanding. The conflict in the book is resolved by the last page, and the book has a happy ending.
The writing in the series is simple and engages the reader of the target age. Since Nancy Drew is around eight years and studying in third grade, the clues mentioned in the book are rather simple and easy to solve. Though the genre seems to be pretty heavy, The Clue Crew series deals with less complex and gentle ideas, usually dealing with disappearing and missing items, as well as the culprit who caused the incident to happen.
Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series is the perfect book to help your child dive into the mystery genre! Here are some of the top-rated books under the Clue Crew Series
Sleepover Sleuths
Sleepover sleuths is the first book in the Clue Crew series. In this introductory book, the reader finds out the origin of the Clue Crew and how it all started. Dierdre, a friend of Nancy Drew invites her, along with her friends George Fayne and Bess Marvin to her sleepover party. The theme of the party is decided to be “City Girls Doll” and each of the guests is expected to bring their own City Girl’s Doll to the sleepover. As the awaited day arrives, it seemed as if nothing could go wrong. As the night wraps up after loads of fun and a fashion show, the sleepover turns out to be a success.
However, the next morning, Deirdre’s City Girls doll, Hollywood Heather goes missing. Dierdre asks Nancy to help solve this mystery, who teams up with Bess and George. After days of searching, they finally find the missing doll. Their friend Madison praises their detective skills and encourages them to continue solving mysteries. Sleepover sleuths set the foundation of the Clue Crew, who goes on to solve a variety of crimes in the following books.
Scream for Ice Cream
A newly opened ice cream store, Jim and Barry’s Ice Cream Factory is celebrating their opening ceremony with an ice cream flavor contest. The rules of the competition are simple, the contestants have to create a new flavor of ice cream and the winner would get a year’s worth of supply of ice cream. As the contest date approaches, everyone is busy whipping their unique flavors of ice cream, so does the Clue Crew. Dierdre starts to write about the competition on her website and decides to review a few of the contestants’ flavors.
During the kick-off event a few days prior to the final tasting, Kendra, a friend of the Clue Crew’s recipe goes missing. The Clue Crew decides to investigate and spends the next few days narrowing down their suspect list. They go through every potential suspect and finally corner the suspect, who confesses to stealing the recipe.
The Circus Scare
The flyers announce that a circus is coming to River Height. This circus claims to be one of the biggest and best circus shows, which will feature funny clowns, fearless acrobats, talented animals, and more! As the town is excited to watch the circus perform, the performers don’t seem very excited. Some of their props have gone missing, and some of them performed without the essential props. The Clue Crew begins to suspect that someone is messing around with the circus. They decide to find the person who is causing all this hassle, so the claims about the circus on the flyer continue to be true!
Lights, Camera… Cats
When Mr. Carson Drew’s client invites him to the set of a new movie, Nancy Drew and her friends George and Bess tag along. Hollywood’s famous cat Fluffington stares in the movie. The Clue Crew is excited as this is their first taste of Hollywood. They get to watch behind the scenes of the movie, get to see the Hollywood star in real life, and are even cast as extras in the movie. Everything is fun until Fluffington goes missing. The production of the movie is temporarily halted, as chaos breaks out to find Fluffington. The Clue Crew steps forward to find the missing movie star as the show must go on.
Wedding Day Disaster
Nancy Drew’s cousin is getting married, and she is assigned the important role of being a flower girl at the wedding. Bess and George have a special job too!- bringing out the wedding cake at the right time. As soon as the cake is brought out, Nancy notices a slice from the cake is missing. The Clue Crew decides to step in and investigate as a series of unfortunate events start to occur to the brides who are getting married there- one of the brides sees someone dressed as a ghost, Nancy’s car is tampered with, the bride’s gifts are stolen and the wedding dress of another bride is slashed. As the Clue Crew starts investigating, the clues point out an unexpected suspect.
Babysitting Bandit
Nancy Drew’s neighbor hires the Clue Crew to babysit her eighteen-month-old identical twins. The Crew is happy to help, after all, it couldn’t be harder than the mysteries they solved. It turns out babysitting is harder than they expected. It becomes double the trouble when the twin’s toys start to go missing. The Clue Crew decides to investigate the missing toys while looking after the babies.
Book #28 Time Thief
The people of River Heights gather at River Heights Elementary school to attend the opening of the time capsule. When Principal Newman opens the time capsule buried 30 years ago, a vintage doll is missing from the capsule. When was the vintage doll stolen if the time capsule had been buried the whole time? Questions and rumors about the potential thief and the timing of the theft were being discussed among the people. As the town murmurs about the disappearance of the vintage doll, the Clue Crew steps forward to dig for clues to find the time thief.
Designed for Disaster
Nancy Drew signs up for the River Heights Fashion Show. In the first round, the contestants are expected to submit their fashion designs. In round two, the selected contestants get to show their designs at the fashion show. With Bess and George on her team, the three of them formulate and come up with new clothing ideas and move on to the next round. Someone starts sabotaging the competition by stealing designs, fabric and ruining the models’ catwalk. The Clue Crew puts their detective skills before their fashion designing skills to find the suspect before it’s too late!
Dance Off
River Heights! Kids Can Dance, a popular reality TV show is holding auditions at River Heights Elementary School. The dance fever has hit everyone, and like everybody else, the Clue Crew decides to audition for the show. Bryce Brown, the famous host is hosting the competition, and everyone is eager to meet him. As the auditions begin, something is going wrong. Someone seems to be sabotaging everyone’s performance! The equipment doesn’t seem to be working during some performances, the music goes off at unexpected times, some dancers’ routine is off, and overall, a hassle. As everyone gets worried about their audition being sabotaged, the Clue Crew decides to search for the saboteur, so the auditions can go smoothly.
Cooking Camp Disaster
The Clue Crew is excited as they get to spend their summer at Kid Kuisine, a cooking camp. Chef Giorgio is going to teach them how to make delicious food, and when the camp comes to an end, they will be cooking delicious dishes for their families on the last day. All the Junior chefs are enthusiastic when the camp announces that one of them would be crowned Best Chef on the last day of camp. As a couple of days pass, the dishes don’t taste as they should, the pizza, brownies, and other goodies aren’t as delicious as they were supposed to be. Turns out, the recipe has been tampered with, and is now a recipe for disaster! The Clue Crew steps forward to find out who has been messing with the recipes and their taste buds!
The Flower Show Fiasco
Nancy gets special VIP tickets to the annual River Heights Flower Show as she took care of Mimsy Bourret’s prized roses when Bourret was away in Paris. She invites Bess and George to accompany her to the flower show. They can’t wait to see the flowers put on display, the ballroom, and of course the food! When the Clue Crew enters the place, a disaster strikes! Mimsy Bourret’s prized flowers go missing! The Clue Crew rose to the rescue to find the missing flowers before it’s too late!
Butterfly Blues
The Clue Crew is excited to visit the Flutter House, a new butterfly museum in River Heights. They get to see a variety of butterflies that are flying freely in the closed space. Nancy and her friends are awestruck by the butterflies, and even get a glance at these beautiful butterflies up close. As they are leaving the museum, the Blue Morpho, one of the rarest butterflies goes missing. Everyone has butterflies in their stomach, worried about the missing Blue Morpho. With minimal clues and a long suspect list, the Clue Crew decide to retrieve this valuable and rare butterfly safely to the museum.
Final thoughts on Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series
These are some of the top-rated books in the Clue Crew series. Nancy Drew caters to a variety of age groups from young children to young adults. This series is a perfect way to help your child get into mystery stories, as well as the Nancy Drew series. The other books in the Clue Crew series are equally interesting and are usually gripping until the last page. This series could also encourage your child to write their own stories, and learn the skills in storytelling. Someday, they might write their crime fiction story, who knows!
Share with your friends
