Tuutikki Tolonen: Agnes and the Garden of Dreams (first published by WSOY in 2020 under the title Agnes ja unien avain)
Agnes and her mother arrive one summer day in their new home, Harmala, a small country town where they don’t know a single person. Agnes’ parents had just divorced, so her mother had to look for a new house and a new job. Although there are moving boxes piled up everywhere in the apartment, Agnes at least has the opportunity to get to know the town, while she walks an elderly dog of an elderly neighbor. During one of their walks, they wander into the cemetery, where the girl finds a strange tombstone. At the same time, she begins to see a recurring dream about walking in a garden. In his work, the Finnish author aims to tackle the questions of whether ghosts really exist and if prophecies may come true.
Robin Stevens: First Class Murder (Puffin Books 2016)
In this story of the series, Hazel’s father invited Daisy and Hazel to go on a summer vacation trip to Europe. Mr. Wong believes in choosing the best of everything, so there is no other possibility of transportation than the famous Orient Express. Since the previous incident(s), Hazel’s father thinks it’s better to keep the girls out of any situation where they might get into trouble. However, nobody can blame them that if they come across a murder, they have to investigate it.
Erin Entrada Kelly: Hello, Universe (Greenwillow Books 2017)
In Erin Entrada’s Kelly Newberry Medal-awarded book, we can follow the story of five children at the beginning of summer vacation. Virgil gets into trouble due to Chet’s evil trick, but Kaori starts to worry about him, so she goes looking for him with her sister and Valencia. The individual chapters follow the children and in Valencia’s chapters she is the narrator. The author believes that every sentence should have a purpose. The major aim for her is character development and that her characters seem so real, as if they could step off the pages of the book.
Astrid Lindgren: A Kalle Blomkvist Mystery: Master Detective (Oxford University Press 2017)
Kalle Blomkvist is a real Master Detective. He may be feared by London bandits and Chicago thugs because he cannot be misled, he will detect all crimes. The only problem is that Kalle does not live in London or Chicago, but in a peaceful small Swedish town, Lillköping. This makes it hard for him to follow in the footsteps of his great predecessors Sherlock Holmes, Poirot or Maigret. However, (bad)luck brings a crime mystery to Kalle, which he immediately throws himself into, accompanied by his friends. A humorous, exciting story that can be read repeatedly to experience adventures during the summer break, which is such a good thing that it’s almost unbelievable having been invented by adults (as our protagonists said).
