Kid Kritics Yuto and Carlitos
We very much enjoyed the few stories actually written by kids in the new book called
GREAT WRITERS AND KIDS WRITE MYSTERY STORIES Random House 0-679-87939-0.
It features a collection of short stories about detectives, crime and
solving puzzles. Some of the "kids" were not kids at all.Five of the thirteen stories were co-written with the adult sons or daughters of the alleged great writers. Two "kid" co-contributors were 17. This leaves only six stories with actual kids allegedly participating in the writing of the stories. Several of these stories are so cleanly written and edited that one doubts the kid did anything. Remember your last Soapbox Derby Race? You know, the kid is supposed to build his own car with little or no help from his parents. But once you see the racecars, some with advanced planning, materials, sophisticated steering and braking systems...you see which cars were really built by the kid. The funky ones are for real. Well these stories are like that...you can tell the real ones. Unfortunately, some of the stories where kids actually co-wrote are not very good stories. While some kids make good painters, kids don't make good writers, the tools, vocabulary, grammar, style... are too complicated.
Of these, The Secret Enchanted Dress by Eve and Scott Turow was my favorite...it had the ring of eight-year-old truth in it. The ending is a puzzle. If a pushy neurotic fibbing overachieving parent was there doing the actual work, this critic couldn't tell.
The best story however could be The Chocolate Chip Alarm by Nat and Max Allan Collins. It too was genuine. Not just another day on the paper route when trouble breaks out in a mysterious way. This short story was told with real 12-year-old kidspeak and kidsthink built in.
As a literary critic, We were told to set our own standards and have decided that over half the stories in the book weren't written by "kids" at all. So any author over 52 inches tall, has to pay adult fare on the city bus and will be considered adult fare in this review, also.
Another good story was by Lucy Kaminsky and her Dad, Stuart. It's title is Mother Knows Best. But again, Lucy was 17 years old...is she a kid? We think not.
The editors and the publishers have deliberately lied to us by using adult offspring of the alleged great mystery writers. Truth in labeling is important to all of us who love to read. Random House should get the big green weenie award for fibbing. By the way, the artwork is great...by Gahan Wilson...too bad he had to get mixed up in such a nefarious scam. NOT RECOMMENDED.