This is book 2 in a fabulous series. However, thanks to the handy introduction to Sally Stick and her dog Fetch the reader doesn’t need to read book 1 first to really enjoy this.
Stick lives with her grandma. But at the start of this story her granny has gone into hospital so she has to go and stay with her uncle. I love how in one of the illustrations Phillip Ardagh has cast himself as the Uncle. Stick and her dog Fetch are detectives. In this book they try to solve 3 mysteries/crimes. What is hilarious is that each time they slightly mis-understand the task but things seem to some how work out in the end.
My favourite story in this collection is a glass half-full. Her Uncle asks if they can investigate and find his gold rimmed glasses, and the reward is sausages! So of course her dog is super keen to help!. You could ask some great question when reading this with children. For example you could ask: ‘What else could Stick’s uncle offer as a reward?’ “What would motivate you as a reward’?’
They look all over the house and discover lots of different shaped and sized drinking glasses. Some with and some with. This story would definitely encourage children to go off and do their own hide and seek.
Then Stick stumbles across an old type writers. A delightful addition to this short story is her writing a case summary on the type writer. Which as she explains unlike a computer you can’t correct the mistakes. Young kids are going to love spotting the mistakes in what she has written.
Then it turns out they were looking for a different sort of glasses entirely!
Highly recommend for 5 to 8 year olds.