A (Scary) Success Story

Web site (www.maricopa.gov/library). To read the novel, The Mystery Club of Luna Drive by James M. Deem, visit the library's home page and click on the image of a haunted house.

The Mystery Club of Luna Drive tells the story of Luz Lucero, a sixth grader who's upset because her single mom has made her move into a house that Luz is convinced is haunted. Things get even stranger when she meets Dwight and Max, two boys who, like Luz, are new to the school, and she and Max borrow books from the local library that contain envelopes—addressed to them personally—that contain a secret code. At the end of the chapter comes a second coded message. The library plans to add supplementary puzzles and activities to its site as the novel unfolds.

The story also involves another notable character—a bizarre school librarian named Mrs. Norolla, who wears white gloves, checks the books for grime, demands that the children be quiet, and insists that they observe the library's strange rules. To say that Mrs. Norolla embodies the stereotype of a fussy school librarian puts it mildly; but author Deem advises any librarians that read the chapter and begin to fume to be patient. There's more to Mrs. Norolla than meets the eye, he says.

The online mystery is the brainchild of Tim Wadham, MCLD's youth services coordinator for the past two years. When he met Deem, an author who specializes in stories for middle-school readers, such as How to Read Your Mother's Mind (1994) and Bodies from the Bog (1998, both Houghton), Wadham sold Deem on his idea for a story and applied for a Library Services and Technology Act grant to fund it. Wadham says he wanted "a cool story idea, something where kids would want to come back month after month to find out what happens next. Beyond that the thought was to do something that could demonstrate how a public library could use the Internet as a place to actually do some programming, rather than simply a place to announce the date, time, and locations of programming." The library received about $17,000—enough to pay Deem to write a 12–chapter novel and visit every MCLD branch to present a program for local Web-site readers.

Since it's Wadham's goal "to motivate the children of Maricopa County to read more," Deem created a story that reflects the real-life experiences of kids living in the Phoenix area. Deem, who lives in nearby Scottsdale, AZ, and is a former reading specialist and college writing instructor, says the story is spooky, and he ends each chapter with a cliff-hanger. Wadham wants the novel to be easy to read and easy to print, so the text is big and bold, and broken up by secret messages and illustrations from Claudia Myers, MCLD's graphic artist. A "Print This Chapter" button, located at the bottom of each page, allows students who run out of time on one of the library's computers to read it later.

Wadham will keep statistics on how many visitors are attracted to The Mystery Club of Luna Drive, and interview children and parents who read the story. Mary Wong, a teacher-librarian at the Paradise Valley Middle School in Phoenix, says, "I bookmarked the Web site on the library's 15 computers so kids can go directly to the site to read the story and visit the related links," which also include an author biography and activities. She also printed the text and put it in a binder, and printed the site's URL on slips of paper for kids to take home with them. Wong says one of her English teachers uses the novel in her class to discuss "the elements of a mystery." Wong recommends the mystery to librarians working with third through eighth graders, and offers a few recommendations: "Encourage parents to read the online novel with their kids.... Have kids make predictions about what will happen next.... Encourage the kids to read another mystery while they are waiting for the next installment."

Wadham says that the mystery's final chapter will be posted August 1, 2004, and the complete novel will remain online for 12 months. He hopes the novel will attract students in grades three through eight—especially the ones who are in danger of losing interest in reading. "We all know how kids are so drawn to the Web," Wadham says, "[and] we can reach kids where they so often are."