Changes

|title=Mariella Mystery investigates: The Ghostly Guinea Pig

|author=Kate Pankhurst

|publisher=Orion

|date=April 2013

|summary=Short, cosy crime for newly-independent girl readers from 6-9 years. Look out for the series.

}}

Just picking up this book will be enough to entice most girls into reading it. The book’s appeal is overwhelmingly visual, although it’s a proper story for newly fluent readers. Mariella’s journal is decorated with her own lively black and white cartoons; I particularly liked her feckless guinea pigs. Pages from The Young Super Sleuth’s Handbook, the local newspaper and Mariella’s other sources of information add up to contextual clues on every page to supplement the text. With minimal help, your youngster should be able to suss out the story. This is intended as the first book in a series, a great way of engaging less confident readers once they’re hooked into plot-conjecture and aspirational characters.