Unsolved Mysteries

Unexplainable events of the past tantalize and delight young readers

By Kathleen Baxter -- School Library Journal, 12/1/2006

I remember reading Julius Lester’s Sam and the Tigers (Dial, 1996) to a group of kindergarteners. At the book’s end, the group sighed happily when Sam triumphed over hungry tigers by consuming 169 pancakes. Then one little boy tentatively asked, “Is it true? Do tigers really turn into butter when they run fast?” I started to explain that this was a story, when another boy loudly burst in. “It’s true! I’ve seen it!”

Ah, seeing is believing, but not seeing is tantalizing. Esteemed fiction writer Gary Blackwood has created a compelling series of marvelously designed Unsolved History books (Benchmark, 2006). I never met a historical mystery I didn’t like, and lots of kids feel the same way.

The mysterious disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, is probably familiar to some modern kids. Did the duo crash into the Pacific Ocean, lost and out of fuel? Or did they land in a Japanese-controlled area and survive, only to be later executed? We don’t know for sure, and that uncertainty is what keeps their story alive. In Blackwood’s Debatable Deaths, Earhart and Noonan join a list of other intriguing names. Meriwether Lewis: Did he kill himself or was he murdered? Napoleon Bonaparte: Was he poisoned while in exile? Was Christopher Marlowe fatally stabbed in a barroom brawl or did he survive, change his name to William Shakespeare, and write a little play called Hamlet? This is cool stuff!

Did King Arthur ever exist? How could anyone that wonderful not have existed? Legends or Lies describes Camelot, Robin Hood, the female Pope Joan, Atlantis, and other great stories that might have grown up around a tiny, but bright microbe of truth. And somehow the world seems richer for believing that these men and women were once in it! Showing Blackwood’s books to your booktalk audience may be the first time they encounter these fabulous, iconic tales.

Enigmatic Events is about puzzles in the past that have not been solved to our collective satisfaction. What caused the extinction of the dinosaurs—a giant comet, a plague, climate change? Ask your booktalk listeners what they think. Their answers may not be any further off than what some of the experts believe. Other true histories include the Roanoke Colony, where 115 people eerily vanished, leaving not a single button or thread of clothing behind; the Mary Celeste, a ship that lost its entire crew in the middle of the ocean; the Tunguska event, when a vast tract of Siberia was inexplicably devastated in 1908, as if by a nuclear bomb. And why exactly did the airship Hindenburg catch fire while trying to land in New Jersey? These fantastic mysteries have kept people of all ages wondering for years.

Perplexing People introduces us to a fascinating rogues’ gallery of pretenders who claim to be someone famous or royal or wealthy, someone who was missing or who had amnesia. Some may actually be genuine. But imposters are perfectly aware that they are lying. How can we tell which is which?

Blackwood points out that DNA testing helps only if DNA is available. We don’t have a single drop of blood from the mighty Maid of Orleans. So how can we prove that any of the women who claimed to be Joan of Arc truly escaped burning at the stake while someone else died in their stead? Why did that notorious prisoner in 18th century France always wear an iron mask? Did he look too much like someone important? Was Brushy Bill Roberts really Billy the Kid? As an old man, Roberts claimed he was the famous bandit and said that Sheriff Pat Garrett never killed him. A lot of people still believe Roberts’ story!

Believe without seeing. But first, take a long look at Blackwood’s books, beautifully designed and bursting with colorful illustrations. Then, before you show the actual books to your audience, start out by relating one of the intriguing tales from any of these volumes. When your booktalk audience asks you if the stories are real, you can declare, “It’s true. I’ve read it!”