In her delightfully offbeat middle-grade mystery, A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall, Newbery Honor-winning author Jasmine Warga (Other Words for Home; A Rover's Story) gracefully interlaces a middle school coming-of-age tale with an art heist whodunit. A painting has gone missing from the museum where almost-12-year-old Rami Ahmed's mother works as cleaning crew supervisor. She is under suspicion, and Rami thinks that if he can crack the case, he'll keep her out of jail.
Middle school has gotten off to a rough start for Rami, whose parents were born in Lebanon. He is self-conscious, which makes it difficult to connect with people. Loud, confident Veda, whose parents were born in India, ignores the awkwardness; she took him in "after everything bad went down with his old friends," and now, Veda gets right to business helping Rami solve the art theft. Adding to the mystery, Rami has repeatedly seen a girl with bare feet hovering above the floor in Cherry Hall, the room where the painting had hung. Once he gets over his initial shock, he deduces she must have something to do with the missing painting.
A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall is charmingly reminiscent of early- and mid-20th century novels like Half Magic by Edward Eager and Five Children and It by E. Nesbit, as well as those by more contemporary authors like Kate DiCamillo and Erin Entrada Kelly. Matt Rockefeller's black-and-white illustrations at the open and close of the book set the scene with elegant images of the museum and its grounds. Warga's novel, like the floating girl, contains a delicious "multitude of mysteries." --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor