Closed for the Season

When Logan moves into his new house he makes three discoveries. One: His new house is a shambles, and it is going to take a lot of work to make it look nice. Two: His new neighbors are a very weird, nosy kid named Arthur and his eccentric grandmother. Three: The former owner of his house was murdered in the basement. Even though Logan thinks that Arthur is very strange, a little nerdy, and very rude about eating other people’s food, he and Logan become friends. It is Arthur that tells Logan the story of the murder that took place in his house. Mrs. Donaldson, the former owner of the house, worked at an amusement park in town called The Magic Forest. It was discovered that someone had been stealing money from the park, and Mrs. Donaldson was a suspect, but the money was never found. Many people believed that she had the money hidden in her house somewhere. The park eventually closed down, and one night Mrs. Donaldson was pushed down her steps and left for dead. Her house was ransacked. It was believed that someone was looking for the stolen money. Logan is very disturbed by Arthur’s tale, but he’s also intrigued. The police have let the case go cold, but Arthur and Logan decided to conduct their own investigation. The mystery leads them into encounters with the town’s most colorful and dangerous characters and ultimately back to the abandoned amusement park.

Closed for the Season is a good old-fashioned mystery, and it’s very kid friendly. I love the idea of an abandoned amusement park as a setting for a spooky story. The Magic Forest was a storybook themed park, so it is inhabited by many familiar characters, but the park is overgrown with kudzu vines, and everything is decaying which gives the park a very sinister feel (kind of like storybook characters gone rotten). The pace of this story is very good. The mystery unfolds just quickly enough to keep the reader interested, but it’s not too complicated for younger or less experienced readers. The “bad guys” are scary, but they are still pretty G-rated. As a teacher I appreciated that the author would write something like, “Danny hurled a few swear words at the man.” Instead of actually spelling out what he said. I hate when I feel like I couldn’t use an otherwise perfectly great book in class just because the author found it necessary to include inappropriate language. It’s especially annoying when it’s only two or three curse words ruining an otherwise perfectly age appropriate book. Mary Downing Hahn lets the reader know how nasty her bad guys are, but she also lets the reader use his or her imagination. After all, we don’t need to know the exact swear words he said do we? I also appreciated that I didn’t figure out “who done it” too early in the book. Many children’s mysteries are too easy to figure out. This one kept me guessing for quite a while. Hahn writes some wonderful characters. They range from quirky to down right creepy, and it makes for very fun reading. I see online that Hahn specializes in spooky mysteries. I am looking forward to reading some more of her work. If all of her books are this easy to read and this full of suspense, I can see her being an author that kids really appreciate!

Hear a synopsis of the book given by the author herself

and see images of the abandoned park that inspired the story.