PaleoJoe’s Dinosaur Detective Club
Friday, July 13th, 2007
I just finished a fun book: The Disappearance of Dinosaur Sue, the first in Dinosaur 
Detective Club, written by Joseph Kchodl and Wendy Caszatt-Allen. If you love dinosaurs and you love mysteries and you are at the early chapter book phase, or you know and love someone who fits that description, I recommend this book for you.
PaleoJoe is a paleontologist, trained in careful, scientific observation and reasoning. And he’s an expert in his field. When Dinosaur Sue, the world’s most complete skeleton of a T-Rex is stolen from its home at the World Famous Field Museum in Chicago, they call in PaleoJoe even before they call the Police. His young friend Shelly, an eleven year-old junior paleontologist takes advantage of PaleoJoe’s tendency to absent-mindedness to get in on the chase.
Something else I liked about this book was its interesting use of reasoning, based upon scientific method. PaleoJoe instructs Shelly about how paleontologists go about finding fossils, and how the evidence that is collected during the fossil excavation is carefully observed and compared with other data to deduce the fascinating details about the lives of the dinosaurs and about the state of the world when they lived.
This book is published by Mackinac Island Press, a small regional press in 
Michigan. They have an interesting and unique assortment of books that they publish, and several others besides The Disappearance of Dinosaur Sue featuring PaleoJoe., including the 2nd in this series, Stolen Stegosaurus, where PaleoJoe and Shelly, with Shelly’s schoolmate Dakota, “battle the dark side of fossil collecting.” And just out last month is Secret Sabertooth, #3 in the series.
If you or your child likes Nate the Great or Cam Jansen, you’ll find this book an entertaining second step into longer chapter books. There’s even a funny little animated dinosaur at the bottom of the pages. Flip the pages and watch him run.
