The North Pole Mystery by Mary Blount Christian, illustrated by Joe Boddy, 1989.

This book is part of the Sherlock Street Detectives series.

David is supposed to be watching his younger brother, Adam, while his mother is gone, but he gets absorbed in his new book. When David’s friends come to see him, they realize that Adam is missing!

The kids look for Adam everywhere, but they can’t find him. David is very worried.

Walter tries to use his dog, Watson, to track down Adam, but Watson hasn’t been trained to track people. When that doesn’t work, Walter tries writing down everything David can remember about Adam’s disappearance, but because David was reading instead of watching, he can’t remember much.

One thing that David remembers is that Adam wanted to go for a walk. David didn’t want to go, so he let Adam play with his compass instead. David explained to Adam that a compass always points toward the North Pole, and that fascinated Adam because the North Pole is where Santa Claus lives. The kids realize that Adam still has the compass, so he is probably using it to go north and find Santa!

What they need to do is go north themselves to find Adam, but they don’t have another compass. What can they do?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

It’s a fun picture book mystery, but it’s also educational. The books in this series use scientific concepts to explain the mysteries or to help solve problems. This book explains how a compass works, and to find Adam, the kids have to create a compass of their own.

There is also a vocabulary list and glossary in the back of the book.