Adventures of the Kids from Detective School

A young woman spends the day visiting a children’s museum. It is a famous museum and she has wanted to visit the museum for a long time. She wants to make sure she sees everything. Using the museum map as a guide, she crosses off each exhibit after she walks through it. She has spent several hours walking through all the exhibits. 

The more popular exhibits are located on the first three floors of the museum. The special exhibits are located on the first floor. The famous doll collection is located on the second floor, and a science exhibit is located on the third floor. The exhibit that showcases a variety of arts and crafts projects is located on the fourth floor. In addition, there is an area set aside with crafts tables that children can use to make their own projects. By the time most visitors finish walking through the exhibits on the first three floors, they tend to leave. They have reached the end of the day or the time they have to visit the museum.

Before she goes into the museum store, the woman decides to make one more pass through the museum. She rides the elevator to the fifth floor, and quickly walks through the exhibit a second time. The exhibit is one of the long-standing exhibits, but it is also one of the more obscure exhibits. The exhibit showcases various collections such as rare stamps, coins, buttons, magnets, and novelty pins designed to be appealing to children. There are also a few nature exhibits showcasing dried leaves and flowers. 

As the woman is about to leave, she notices a large wooden door that is ornately designed. She assumes there must be another exhibit located inside and opens the door. She opens the door and sees a number of floor to ceiling bookcases filled with hardcover books. She approaches one of the bookcases and sees that it holds the entire collection of an author that wrote famous children’s books. They books are arranged in alphabetized by author and within each author by title. 

She notices the series of books she read as a child from a famous author. To encourage children to read, the author wrote books designed to be read based on their grade in school. There were roughly four books for each grade, beginning in grade 1 and they went all the way up through grade 12 for a total of 50 books. In the middle of each book, a page was intentionally inserted with a letter. The page was meant to be torn out and saved. The individual letters made up a riddle, and once solved, children could send in the answer to the riddle to receive a voucher for a new bicycle. Bicycle shops would honor the voucher. At the time, the contest was very popular and a great enticement to encourage children to read the books.

The books were about a group of kids in detective school. The story of each book was around solving a mystery such as finding a lost item, the case of the missing school bell, or treasure hunt. The young woman read each of the books up until high school. She picks up one of the books and looks inside the middle to see if the page includes a letter. She notices the letter “I”.

She decides to open each book and look for the letter so she can finally solve the riddle. She takes out a piece of paper and writes down each letter. The message was designed to be revealed in sequential order after reading each book to provide clues to help children solve the riddle. After she finishes locating the letter for each book, she sits down at a nearby table to decipher the message:

One plus one is two

Two plus two is four

And three plus three is

The woman solves the riddle as the answer is six. 

As she gets up to leave, someone from the museum enters the room and says, “This is a private room. I am afraid that visitors are not allowed. The door to the room is usually locked.”

The woman apologizes, “I’m sorry. The door was unlocked and I thought it was an exhibit. I’ve never seen so many famous children’s books in one location. It has all the famous collections from my generation as well as others. I know some of them must be out of print.”

The museum staff member says, “This is our Children’s Library. It is a special exhibit and closed off to the public, but can be reserved for private viewings. Most of the books were donated to the museum, and a few of them were obtained in auctions. It took many years to complete the collections. If you are interested, I can provide a list of all the authors that are included in the library.”

The museum staff member walks to the back of the library and enters a small room and returns holding a museum brochure. She hands the brochure to the woman. 

The woman says, “Thank you. I have wanted to visit this museum for a long time. I just spent the day walking through all the exhibits reconnecting and remembering the toys and books I had as a child. I forgot about so many of them.”

The woman leaves the library and presses the button to wait for the elevator. As she waits for the elevator to arrive, she opens the brochure and glances at all names of all the authors. She takes the elevator down to the main floor and goes into the museum store. She spends some time walking through the store, and goes into the area where the children’s books are located. She decides to buy one of the books she never got around to reading from her favorite childhood author. She opens it to the middle of the book where the page is intentionally printed with the letter “E” on it. 

She looks on the back side of the page and notices there is a message that says, “While the contest for a new bike has ended, a 10% coupon code for additional books in the series is available if you visit www.website.com. We hope you enjoy reading the Adventures of the Kids from Detective School”.