Mystery at the Biltmore #2: The Classified Catnapping

Written by Colleen Nelson

Illustrated by Peggy Collins

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-336-0

136 pp.

Ages 7-10

April 2025 

 

Things are certainly exciting at the Biltmore, the residence that Elodie LaRue lives at on the Upper West Side in New York City. Who knew that after her first case, The Vanderhoff Heist, that there would be another mystery to solve at the Biltmore during the same summer? And her next would begin with a murder! (Just kidding. It's just a movie.)

 

The courtyard of the Biltmore has become a movie set for a film that features the most famous feline resident of the building. Bijou, the very wealthy heir to the fortune of fashion designer Lucien Saint Martin, lives in a swanky apartment with her nanny, Paula Benson, who has had to leave her family, notably her 10-year-old daughter Tiya, in Queens. While visiting her mom, Tiya is tasked with getting a driver and car to pick up Bijou at her pet grooming salon while Paula is busy prepping for Bijou's big eighth-birthday bash. But Tiya arrives late at Spaw and learns that Bijou has already been picked up. So, the child asks Elodie and her sidekick Oscar, an aspiring stuntman and magician, to find Bijou before the party that night.

From Mystery at the Biltmore: The Classified Catnapping, written by Colleen Nelson, illustrated by Peggy Collins

The Biltmore has no shortage of suspects, from the regular residents like Mrs. Fineman and her noisy Pomeranian Lawrence, and Bianca Winthrop Parker Saint March, the niece of Bijou's cat daddy, to Freddy the doorman, and those associated with the movie, like the animal trainer, Bijou's agent, Bijou's biographer, and even stuntman Lance Beauregard. But Elodie and Oscar have to follow the clues, ask the right questions, and figure out the motive before they can catch the wrongdoer, hopefully before Paula finds out.

 

Colleen Nelson keeps young readers guessing with each chapter focused on another character. She puts out a number of red herrings–including of the fishy variety–but always helps the reader see the logic in Elodie and Oscar's thinking, never surprising them with unfair plot elements. Colleen Nelson actually makes the mystery solvable as the story progresses, but you have to pay attention. Elodie does, and she is always able to figure out who did the crime.

From Mystery at the Biltmore: The Classified Catnapping, written by Colleen Nelson, illustrated by Peggy Collins

The mystery is paramount and novel, and perfect for an early middle-grade reader. Mysteries can become convoluted and difficult to dissect but Colleen Nelson actually keeps the plot fairly linear, with no curve balls or weird surprises, thereby allowing the reader to follow with Elodie and Oscar, and Carnegie, her West Highland Terrier, as they unearth what everyone is and was up to. Then add some charming spot art from Peggy Collins, some word play like puns–who doesn't like Spaw as the name of a pet grooming salon?–an assortment of crazy stunts and magic tricks courtesy of Oscar, and The Classified Catnapping becomes an entertaining middle-grade cozy that will have young readers eager for another visit to the Biltmore.

 

🏢 🏢 🏢 🏢 🏢

 

Mystery at the Biltmore #1: The Vanderhoff Heist (2024)

Mystery at the Biltmore #2: The Classified Catnapping (April, 2025)

Mystery at the Biltmore: The Vanderhoff Heist

Written by Colleen Nelson

Illustrated by Peggy Collins

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-327-8

136 pp.

Ages 7-10

2024

 

Multi-family residences like hotels, resorts and apartment buildings are fabulous settings for elaborate mysteries, in which a host of suspects can be found within the residents, and Colleen Nelson has found a spectacular setting in her fictional historical residence, the Biltmore, on New York City's Upper West Side. It's loaded with character and characters that make the story rich in personality, both straightforward and intricate in its plotting, and playful in its delivery.

 

It's summer and Elodie LaRue has once again been abandoned to her nanny Miss Rosa by her globe-trotting art crime investigator parents. Determined to make something interesting out of her summer, Elodie posts notices that she is a detective available for hire. The very next day, she is contacted by Agnes, the housekeeper for the world-famous landscape architect Mrs. Vanderhoff whose sapphire earrings have disappeared from a velvet tray in her room. As Agnes is being blamed, the housekeeper encourages Mrs. Vanderhoff to hire Elodie and find the real culprit. 

From Mystery at the Biltmore: The Vanderhoff Heist, written by Colleen Nelson, illustrated by Peggy Collins

With the help of Carnegie, her West Highland Terrier, and a new resident and aspiring stunt person Oscar Delgado, Elodie sets out to solve the mystery of Mrs. Vanderhoff's missing jewels. Along the way, readers meet a menagerie of extraordinary people at the Biltmore, both employees and residents and visitors, as well as an assortment of furry and feathered friends. With so many potential suspects, Elodie and Oscar must put their little grey cells to work and sift through the clues to find the thief.

From Mystery at the Biltmore: The Vanderhoff Heist, written by Colleen Nelson, illustrated by Peggy Collins

I've often declared how challenging it is to write for early and early middle-grade readers. Getting the right mix of appropriate vocabulary and plot to meet their needs and interests without talking down to or above them is difficult. However, if Colleen Nelson has shown us anything, it's that she can write it all. She's written picture books, YA, non-fiction, and middle-grade novels. She's been nominated for countless awards, including the Governor General's Award, and won several readers' choice awards such as the Silver Birch award of the Forest of Reading and the Shining Willow award of the Saskatchewan Young Readers' Choice Awards. Her skill in getting the voice of her characters right, whether kindergarteners (Teaching Mrs. Muddle), middle graders (e.g., The Undercover Book List) or teens struggling with violence, addictions and bullying (e.g., Finding Hope, The Fall, Blood Brothers) or even a dog (e.g., Harvey Comes Home) allows her to create a plethora of worlds in which kids and teens face challenges, some more troubling than others, and find something inside that allows them to prevail. Here, Colleen Nelson has given readers a child whose world may be one of comfort, living at the Biltmore, having a nanny, loving her dog, and feeling secure enough to explore solving mysteries in safety but she also lets us see Elodie as a child who misses her parents and wants to have friends and not waste her summer doing nothing. Fortunately, Elodie's a go-getter and solving a mystery or two is what she's interested in doing. And she's good at it. She knows how to ask questions, how to look at the evidence, even outside-of-the box, and how to follow through. She's going to be an amazing detective. (Hopefully her parents will notice too.)

 

The plot, which feels very much like Only Murders in the Building without the murders, is both intricate and straightforward, perfect for the audience. But adding to Colleen Nelson's story is the darling spot art of Peggy Collins, the author-illustrator of the award-winning Harley the Hero. The art adds little bursts of colour to the book and helps readers envision the Biltmore and all its characters, improving readability and comprehension.

 

The second book in the Mystery at the Biltmore series releases in April (The Classified Catnapping) and I'll be reviewing it next so you can see where the series is going. Colleen Nelson has confidently transitioned Elodie from a potentially bored child to an emergent detective who is willing to help those in her building get the answers they need to their pressing mysteries. With Carnegie, Oscar, Miss Rosa and the others at the Biltmore, she'll be busy and gratified that the LaRue Detective Agency will have new mysteries to solve.

 

🏢 🏢 🏢 🏢 🏢

 

Mystery at the Biltmore #1: The Vanderhoff Heist (2024)

Mystery at the Biltmore #2: The Classified Catnapping (April, 2025)
 

Apartment 713

Written by Kevin Sylvester

HarperCollins

978-1-4434-6094-1

240 pp.

Ages 8-12

September 2022

 

That's what buildings do, Jake. They are like us, constrained by an arc. By time. They–and we–age and decay. They–and we–die. But how do we live while we live? That's the important question. (pg. 122) 

When Jake Simmons and his mom move into the Regency, it's because they've hit rock bottom. Mom has split from her partner Janice and lost her job as a legal secretary. To get back on their feet, the two move into the Regency, which Jake sees as a dump with its peeling paint, curling wallpaper, dust, grimy windows and worse. But, when he becomes acquainted with the original Regency, he recognizes that it is a true home.

Exploring the shambles that is the Regency, Jake makes the acquaintance of Danny, the superintendent, who knows all the residents and what they need. He introduces Jake to the elderly Lily in Apartment 405 whose cats are fed by Danny. Then there's the brilliant Professor who is so focused on her work that Danny cleans up her garbage and the elusive, baseball-loving Gus who won't leave his home. Danny is good about delivering and picking up Gus's mail as well as that of others like the piano-playing Theo in 501 and the enigmatic Delaney who lives somewhere on the seventh floor. These are just some of the odd assortment of residents of the Regency and Jake is happy to agree to be Danny's assistant and help with all his clients' needs. But then Danny gets a letter from a lawyer indicating that the long-term lease between the Regency and the city is set to expire and the residents will need to find another place to live. 

 

Soon after, the purportedly-broken call light for Apartment 713 goes off and Jake heads to the apartment he'd been told was off limits. Sure that someone inside is calling for help, Jake plunges into the apartment and into another world, one in which the Regency is in its infancy, hosting musicians, artists and other famous people while being a home to others. Believing that he was sent back to the 1920s to help save the Regency, Jake and his new-found friend, Beth, explore the mysteries that are hidden in the exclusive building, revealing more about its secrets, its history, and even its future.

Kevin Sylvester can illustrate (e.g., Super-Duper Monster Viewer), tell us sports stories (e.g., Hockey Super Six), entice us with food (e.g., Neil Flambé series) and inform with non-fiction (e.g., Gold Medal for Weird and Follow Your Money with Michael Hlinka) so it's no wonder that he can also write speculative fiction with a time-slip element.  Still Kevin Sylvester includes all those elements in Apartment 713. His artwork peppers the story and there are elements of baseball, food, and history that build on the basic premise of a child dealing with upheaval and trying to find home where it would appear there is none. While there is a very cool time-slip element to Apartment 713, the story is really about looking a little deeper: into a new place, into new friends, and into one's self. It's finding the wonders within and recognizing them for what they are. It's being the solution rather than complaining about the problem. It's finding home by making a home.

While Kevin Sylvester will always give us a good story, well-written and illustrated, often with humour and a light touch, there will always be more. He gently manifests important issues like LGBTQ (e.g., The Fabulous Zed Watson co-authored with Basil Sylvester) and resource monopolization (e.g., Minrs) and, with Apartment 713, there's a message about superficiality.  Hopefully young readers will see beyond the obvious, that old buildings may look like dumps and eccentric people appear to be odd but both are built on histories that make them unique and enrich lives with their presence.

Sunny Days Inside and Other Stories

Written by Caroline Adderson
Groundwood Books
978-1-77306-572-4
176 pp.
Ages 8-12
August 2021

 

The world may be living under the shadow of the same pandemic but our stories are so different. In Sunny Days Inside and Other Stories, author Caroline Adderson takes us into one community, that of a Vancouver low-rise apartment building, and shares the stories of its residents from the eyes of its youth.

Sunny Days Inside relates the story of Danila's family who were finally going on a plane holiday to Días de Sol (Sunny Days) resort in Baja, Mexico, courtesy of her grandmother. Because of the disparity in wealth between their family and her mother's sister, a woman who travels extensively, the holiday becomes a source of conflict, with the children's aunt heading out on a cruise days before they leave. Then the pandemic hits. Danila's family makes their own indoor holiday but it's tinged with sorrow and guilt when her aunt gets COVID-19 on the ship.

Brothers Alek and Ivan decide they're going to become cave men, after all the barbershops close, in the story How to Be a Cave Family. All the strategies that Palaeolithic beings used to survive, from being afraid of everybody, to hunting and gathering and developing their own language, become their guide to getting through the pandemic.

In Reo and Juliet, Grade 7 peers from apartments 3D and 4B become friends across their balconies as Reo, the athlete, struggles with how to train and Juliet works at overcoming her shyness.

In the following four stories–I Like Your Tie, The Entrepreneur's Bible, The Two Harriets, and The Incredible Escaping Bra Man–young people are challenged with parents who are front-line workers, or those who have lost their jobs or closed businesses, or those impacted by illness, including cancer and anxiety. The kids make new friends, become spies and save a resident's life, and face their own fears about the virus, their families and friends, and their new realities. And it's all while adhering to lockdowns and pre-vaccine protocols.

In the final story, Imagine, the young residents and one special one come together in a socially-distanced and rebellious act that brings them together safely and outside.

Caroline Adderson has always written powerful stories (e.g., Very Serious Children, 2007; Middle of Nowhere, 2012; Norman, Speak!, 2014), though with a smidgen of humour that never distracts from serious issues like abandonment, parenting, foster care, and now COVID-19. Told from a variety of perspectives, the pandemic is viewed as an adventure, a source of fear and anxiety, an opportunity, or even a challenge. We've got kids who worry about their parents, who become superheroes, and those who gain perspective on their pre-pandemic lives. They are all different, as are their stories, but somehow young readers will recognize every one them and their issues, sure to see themselves within. These middle-graders are shy and athletic, Deaf and hearing, silly and serious, anxious and confident. Whether annoyed with a younger or older sibling, cooperating with working or non-working parents, cheering the lack of haircuts, or finding new ways to communicate without congregating, these kids are living through this pandemic. In fact, they're staring it in the face, mask securely on and two metres apart, and reclaiming their lives, albeit new configurations of them.