The Pasta Detectives

We buy books for the school library in many different ways... student and staff requests, reading library publications, book shop handouts, browsing in book shops, reading blogs and choosing books from popular authors knowing that everyone will most likely want to read their newest offering. These are only some of the tools that we use. So of course, reviews are incredibly important to us. Because we don't just want a good library, we want a great one. So we need to pay careful attention to what we put on the shelves.

Lately two things seem to have popped up a lot. One is Angry birds - which appears to mentioned in numerous magazine articles, blogs, and probably soon in a book (for some reason you can buy Angry Birds hats outside MBK - everyone needs a plush, red, fake fur hat in 30 degree heat!) and the other is The Pasta Detectives by Andreas Steinhofel.

A lot of people are talking about The Pasta Detectives. And the reviews have been incredibly positive. It sounded good, so it was time to try it out for myself.

Rico finds a piece of pasta on the footpath outside his house. And then he decides to find out how it got there. It's a 'Who cares?' kind of moment. A piece of pasta? But strangely enough, the way that Rico puts it, you do want to find out where the story is going.

Interwoven with the pasta detective work is the story of Mr 2000 - a kidnapper who takes children and then demands 2000 Euros for their safe return. Add themes of friendship, solo parenting, being different and you have a pretty awesome story.

Rico has some kind of something about him that makes him different from other kids (it's either a mental or learning disability), but you never really find out what it is. It doesn't matter. It is Rico's attention to detail that is the key to the story.

If Angry Birds turns out to be as good as this book, I will be very happy.