By Emily Calandrelli, Tamson Weston
A science-mad eight-year-old, stuck at home with a broken leg, uses gadgets and the scientific method to crack the case of a missing dog next door.
Ada Lace has a broken leg and a whole summer stuck on the couch, which would be a disaster for most children but is a golden chance for Ada, who loves gadgets and building and figuring things out. Armed with binoculars, a homemade robot named George, and a notebook, she starts watching the neighborhood, and when a little dog goes missing next door, she and her new friend Nina turn detective. Ada does it the scientist's way, gathering clues, forming a hypothesis, testing it, and following the evidence to the real answer. It's a short, illustrated chapter book with a picture every few pages, built for a reader just settling into chapters, and it slips real ideas about robotics and the scientific method into a friendly mystery without ever feeling like a lesson.
This is a gentle on-ramp for a child moving from picture books into real chapters, short chapters, big print, an illustration on nearly every spread, and a plot with just enough pull to keep pages turning. Ada thinks the way a young scientist thinks, so a fact-loving or gadget-loving child gets a heroine who solves the problem with a notebook and a hypothesis instead of luck. It's the first of a series, which means a child who clicks with Ada has several more cases waiting the moment they finish.