Through a series of entertaining notes to his vacationing owner, Ike the dog defends himself as he feel he was wrongfully imprisoned for the case of the missing cats. Interspersed with intriguing newspaper articles about the case of the missing cats and other animals, poor Ike LaRue cannot seem to catch a break from suspicion of animal related crimes. After escaping jail, Ike begins searching the the missing Hibbin's cats when he hears from sources that cats may be the animal attackers! Ike continues his investigations even after his owner, Mrs. LaRue returns, intent on finding the culprits and he is a success. Ike follows a trail of clues to the cats and manages to keep them in the spot until the police come. He is hailed as a hero for finding the missing cats. Although he is somewhat confused by the hero headlines as he was trying to catch culprits of crimes not return cats home. In the end, he is no longer upset with the police, who wrongfully accused him of kidnapping the Hibbin's cats and is honored with a detective badge. The book is entirely compiled with newspaper articles and note from Ike, a very entertaining way to tell a story! ( )

This is a fantasy mystery story about a dog who is framed for the crime of kidnapping the neighbor's sneaky cats. Through letters written to the dog's owner from jail, the reader begins to uncover the real mystery. Readers must pay close attention to the clues in the picture, because oftentimes the pictures tell a completely different story from the words.

Teaching Connections: mystery genre study, using the pictures as clues, making predictions ( )

Good for its element of mystery (detective fiction), shifting point of view, making inferences, and teaching grammar concepts in small doses. Perfect for AIS or small reading group. ( )

Detective LaRue Letters from the Investigation, by Mark Teague. This was a great children's book and I was very happy with the context. One of my favorite parts of the book was the way the text was set up. Unlike a normal picture book each page is written as a letter from the main character to his owner. This was an amazing idea for young students, letters are starting to disappear and this is a great way to teach children how to write letters. Children need to learn how to write letters and the letter layout is shown in this book perfectly. Another part of this book I liked was the images. The story is told from a dogs point of view and the pictures show where he is sending each letter from. Each picture gives an amazing background for where the letter was sent from. The last thing I liked was the characters. As I stated earlier the main character is a dog, and the other characters are cats. This is a cute idea for kids, and being animals they were given personalities that are stereotypical for dogs and cats. The big picture of this story is to not trust a cat, they are evil. Not a great big picture, more of a joke, no real big idea. ( )

Ike is in jail because is is blamed for the Hibbins' cats going missing. Through his letters begging his owner, Mrs. LaRue, to come home from vacation and rescue him from jail, the reader finds out how Ike solves the mystery and clears his name. This was just as much fun to read as the first book! ( )