Edgar Allan's Official Crime Investigation Notebook by Mary Amato

Yep, Mary Amato continues her tradition of writing funny books that kids will love with this one.  Fifth grade Edgar is a regular old kid-too regular!  He can't measure up to his older brother and can't think of a single thing he is good at.  When Edgar arrives at school one day to find that a thief has stolen his class goldfish AND left behind a poem as a clue he decides that this will be his moment of glory--Edgar will find the thief and everyone will think he is the greatest thing ever! There are a couple of problems with this plan: 1. His goody-two-shoes classmate Patrick is also trying to solve the crime, and seems to be making more progress than Edgar. 2. Every "lead" Edgar follows turns out to be a dead end.

The story is told in excerpts from Edgar's "crime investigation" notebook, hence the title.  More mysterious thefts complicate the investigation, along with more cryptic poems left by the thief.  As Edgar begins to look more closely at his teachers and classmates as suspects, he comes to discover other things about them that he never noticed before.  Destiny, a quiet girl he never talks to, no longer hangs out with her former best friend and seems to be withdrawn and sad.  Taz, the obnoxious class clown, spends an unusual amount of time talking about dogs and also seems a little sad.  One of his teachers seems to be in love with the school custodian.  Patrick is watching Edgar all the time and trying to steal his leads in order to crack the case first. The more Patrick learns about the people around him the more he begins to care about them, and ultimately this winds up being more important than whodunit.

Interwoven with the story are many lessons about poetry.  All the thief's poems are in fact based on famous poems.  It is fun to read the poems and try to figure out where Amato got them from.  This book presents a great opportunity to learn about poetry, and is also a darn fun read!