By starting to read this story you, Dear Reader, are venturing down a path you may soon find impossible to stray from. For the next two weeks, enjoy navigating the twists and turns of a real-life mystery right here in this column. It’s a mystery solved by only one person – a brilliant little girl. Through her deductive reasoning and insight, it took only a week for the fourth grader to uncover the answer. Although many students and teachers have tried, as of this publishing, no one else has been able to duplicate her feat.

Could you be the next?

The beginning starts about two years ago when yours truly was asked to help establish a writing club at Willis Road Elementary school. I was paired up with a fifth-grade English teacher. She would handle teaching, and since I’ve been a writer for over 25 years, I would handle the creative side. And what better way to get kids excited about writing than to have a mystery that needed to be solved? But what mystery should we choose?

One of our own.

During the first week of the club, the students were asked to write a paragraph or two about something that had happened to them. When they read their papers out loud, one student shared a single paragraph that intrigued me more than all the others. The title of her story was “The Flying Trampoline.” She described a pool party she’d had at her house for her birthday. After an hour, the party was interrupted by a large thunderstorm that chased everyone inside. They watched as the storm picked up cushions from the lawn furniture and threw them around the backyard. Then a large gust of wind tossed around the trampoline. That was the end of her story but the beginning of the creative writing mystery – a mystery that needed to be solved by our students. 

The Case the Flying Trampoline.

In the story the trampoline was pulled up by the storm and disappeared into the sky. Despite an exhaustive search, no one could find the trampoline. Surprisingly two weeks later, during a second storm, it was returned to the exact place it had been ripped from during the previous storm. No one knew where the trampoline had gone or how it returned with no damage to it. The teacher and I used the story to challenge all the 4th and 5th grade students to solve the mystery and then write about their solution. We would then name the person who solved the mystery “The 5th grade Detective.” 

The students were so engaged with the writing challenge that we decided to do it again, and this time we did not have to make up a mystery. One was presented to us. And next week it will be presented to you. 

Every detail needed to solve the mystery will be laid out in the story next week. The story is true and happened as written. How do I know? I was there and witnessed the entire event as it unfolded right in front of me. But even I couldn’t imagine such a mystery – one so easy to explain, yet so difficult to solve.

I hope you enjoy our little departure from Flamingo Street over the next two weeks. Pull on your warm slippers, don your best detective hat, sit back in your comfy chair, and get ready to take some notes while you try to solve the mystery. And answer this summer’s ultimate question.

Am I as smart as a fourth grader?