Kidnap at the Catfish Cafe

Author Study Selection

Author:  Patricia Reilly Giff, 1998, Viking

Illustrator:  Lynne Cravath

This is the third and final choice for my author study, and I found it quite different from the previous Giff books.  Kidnap at the Catfish Cafe is a juvenile detective book, and it takes the reader on a hunt to find a purse snatcher.  The detective is a teenage girl who lives in Florida, I believe.  She takes a cat, who is thought to be a stray but turns out as someone's missing pet, as her co-detective.  This cat takes on human qualities and is described as nodding and making other gestures that would make one believe it is speaking to Minnie, the main character.  Minnie ends up solving the case, as I would have expected, and she becomes friends with another amateur detective named Cash. 

The entire plot is exactly what I expected from the beginning.  It is one installment in a series called The Adventures of Minnie and Max.  The characters follow the typical route to solving a mystery.  By that, I am referring to some classic mysteries such as Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.  Each book was a carbon copy of the other, just with different twists, turns, and characters.  This makes it easy for readers to fall in love with the books, but it also makes it easy for them to predict what will happen.  While I have not read other Minnie and Max books, I would suspect that they do the same.  I liked this book, but as I said earlier, it was unlike the other books I have read by Patricia Reilly Giff.  Her recent juvenile chapter books are more historical in nature, and they are more believable.  This book was dull, uninteresting, and very predictable.     



The Jazz Man

Author:  Mary Hays Weik, 1966, Atheneum

This piece of realistic fiction takes us into the home of young Zeke.  He is an African-American boy growing up in an urban era in, what I suspect to be, the 1920s.  Zeke does not go to school.  Instead, he stays at home all day by himself in the apartment he shares with his mom and dad.  The family had recently moved from the Deep South where Zeke was born.  Mom and Dad go to work each day, and Zeke stays home and looks out the window at his neighbors.  One day, a piano is moved into the apartment directly across from his, and it is something he has never seen before.  Suddenly, the tenant brings his friends to his apartment, and they have a jazz session.  It is music that Zeke has never heard before, and he is enthralled.  Day after day, Zeke listens to the music, and it is healing for his small, delicate soul.  Soon after, his mom and dad have a fight, and both of them leave.  Zeke is by himself, and cannot afford food because he is a little boy.  His neighbors look after him, but he is tormented by his parents' departure.  One night, while he is dreaming of the music from the Jazz Man, his mom and dad wake him up.  I think this was eluding to the fact that part of the story was a dream, but I am not sure about that.  It is difficult to understand.

I liked the story, but there were a lot of things I could not believe.  First, why doesn't Zeke go to school?  He has a lame foot, but that is not a reason to stay home.  Second, why on earth do his parents abandon him and leave him to fend for himself?  This is perhaps the most shocking part of the story to me.  I can't believe parents would do that to their children, especially to one so young.  It is an unsettling account of what life was like for a black family in the early part of the 20th century.  I suppose children could identify with the musical descriptions, but I think it would be a stretch of the imagination.  I admit, this was not one of my favorite books, but it is a fictitious story that parallels real events that occurred in America, so I must admire it.