The Mystery of Sara Beth by Polly Putnam, illustrated by Judith Friedman, 1981.

This was one of my favorite books when I was young. It’s a nice mystery story for children in early elementary school.

When a new girl named Sara Beth joins their class, Becky and her friends go out of their way to make her feel welcome. However, Sara Beth barely acknowledges their attempts to make friends with her.

Becky becomes concerned about Sara Beth and her lack of interest in making friends at school. Becky also notices some other odd things about Sara Beth’s behavior, which tends to change unexpectedly.  Sometimes, Sara Beth likes the class’s pet guinea pig, and sometimes she seems afraid of it.  One day, Becky catches Sara Beth taking a reading book home that was supposed to stay in the classroom.  Later, she sees Sara Beth hiding a cupcake from a class party to take home. Could these things help explain what Sara Beth is trying to hide?

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers:

The solution to Sara Beth’s problem is quite simple, but it may seem bigger to younger children. The story presents a good example of the use of observation and logical thinking when approaching a problem. As Becky tries to determine why Sara Beth acts the way she does, Becky watches her closely and makes a list of her observations before coming to her final conclusion.  Becky is not only compassionate toward Sara Beth in trying to help her solve her problem and make friends at her new school, but she is also a very logical thinker.  I really enjoyed her as a character!

The artwork in the book is nice, and I thought it was clever how the borders of all of the images kind of give a hint to Sara Beth’s problem.  Even when the characters are indoors, the pictures are surrounded by snow-covered trees because it’s important to the story that it takes place in winter.  The snow is the root of Sara Beth’s problem.  The girls live in a cold climate and “Sara Beth” comes from a poor family.

(Spoiler: Becky correctly realizes that “Sara Beth” is actually a set of twins, Sara and Beth, which is why they behave differently each time they switch places.  Their family moved to the area from a warmer climate because the twins’ father is looking for work, but they only had enough money for one warm coat for the girls, so one of them has to stay home while the other goes to school.  They take turns going to school, and the one who goes to school brings the other one books, school assignment, and class treats so she can follow the lessons and not miss out.  When Becky confronts one of the twins, Beth, she admits that they were afraid of making friends at school because they knew that someone would find out the truth.  Becky persuades Beth to talk to their teacher, and the teacher arranges for the twins to receive an extra coat that was unclaimed from the school’s lost and found so that they can both come to school.)

In the back of the book, there’s a list of vocabulary words that appear in the story. It does not provide definitions for these words, though. I think that the most unusual words in the book were guinea pig and tetanus shot.

One more thing I thought that I would mention is that Becky, the main character, is African American. This is not mentioned at all in the text of the book and is not important to the story, but it is shown in the pictures.  I didn’t think about it much when I first read the book as a kid, but looking back on it, I found it interesting because it reminded me of the character of Adam in the Third Grade Ghosthunters series.  It fascinates me that there is something about these characters that people wouldn’t know without looking at the pictures, and I also like it that the characters themselves are not defined by race.  It’s just an interesting detail, not central to their characters.