Eucalyptus Street: Green Curse by Sherrill Joseph is the second book in her Nutmeg Street Detective series, and it has only gotten better! Join these young detectives as they use logic and other clues to solve a mystery that hits very close to home.
Lanny, Lexi, Moki, and Rani are becoming well known in their neighborhood for solving mysteries. The four juveniles are smart, talented, and pride themselves on their impeccable manners and mature conversation. In this second book, Isabela de Cordoba is a young woman who has just turned 21 years old and with this birthday milestone she gets a letter from a relative long gone, her great, great grandfather. The letter alerts Isabela that there is a valuable green emerald hidden on her property, a gem worth millions of dollars. Isabela needs help finding it and when she starts hearing noises in the house, while she is home alone, she invites the Nutmeg Street Detectives to come and stay to help her solve the mysteries of her ancestors and find out if her home is haunted.
There are many new characters introduced in this story and for the most part it can be understood without having read the first book, but it helps to know who these kids are and where they come from, all information that helps the reader understand the characters better. Based on wealth and a lot of good luck, some young readers may not relate to the characters as well, as they present themselves as four very privileged individuals.
I give this story five out of five stars for its believable characters and fast-moving plot. In this second book of the set, Joseph has portrayed a young person today, including their use of cell phones for flashlights and pictures! This book will keep you wondering and turning pages right up to the end.
To celebrate the release of the next exciting book in the Botanic Hill Detectives mystery series, Eucalyptus Street: Green Curse is going on tour!
We have an excerpt for you to read and a chance to win a signed, personalized paperback copy of the book, and some matching book swag!
Eucalyptus Street: Green Curse
Publication Date: October 20th
Genre: MG Mystery/ Middle Grade – 9 to 12 years old (For fans of Nancy Drew type mysteries)
In 1945, Isabela de Cordoba’s great-grandfather, the famous silent movie actor Lorenzo de Cordoba, mysteriously hid a legendary, multimillion-dollar emerald somewhere on the family’s sprawling Eucalyptus Street estate. Seventy years later, the gem remains concealed. Nicknamed the “Green Curse,” the emerald is blamed for the Southern California familia’s numerous, untimely deaths.
On her twenty-first birthday, Isabela receives a secret letter with a cryptic poem. These documents from the long-deceased Lorenzo invite her to hunt for the gemstone. But first, she must decipher the poem’s eight stanzas for clues.
To assist, Isabela hires her thirteen-year-old neighbors, the four Botanic Hill Detectives—twins Lanny and Lexi Wyatt, and their best friends, Moki Kalani and Rani Kumar. Eerie footsteps inside the mansion, unexplained occurrences in the adjacent cemetery, and the mysterious tenant in the backyard casita challenge them. But they ingeniously make progress on the poem’s meaning with startling discoveries. Sliding wall panels, a secret room, and hidden passages reveal much. The detectives aren’t the only ones looking for the emerald. The perilous race for the de Cordoba treasure is on!
Sherrill Joseph will be forever inspired by her beautiful students in the San Diego public schools where she taught for thirty-five years before retiring and becoming a published author.
She has peopled and themed the Botanic Hill Detectives Mysteries with children and adult characters of various abilities, races, cultures, and interests. Sherrill strongly believes that children need to find not only themselves in books but others from different races and social situations if all are to become tolerant, anti-racist world citizens. She also feels that kids are amazing human beings who don’t tend to get enough credit from some adults for their blossoming insights and intelligence.
The author created her detectives—patterned after her own fifth-grade students and twelve-year-old twin cousins—to be mature, smart, polite role models that will appeal to parents, teachers, but especially to kids who seek the courage and self-respect needed to realize their greatest potential.
Sherrill is the recent recipient of the Gold Award from Mom’s Choice Awards, and the Gold Award for Children’s Fiction in Mystery from Moonbeams Children’s Book Awards, both for Nutmeg Street: Egyptian Secrets, Book 1 in her Botanic Hill Detectives Mysteries series. She is a member of SCBWI and the Authors Guild and promises many more adventures with the squad to come.
If I were to save just one small bite it could make a meal, well maybe it might it could be a portion fit for a kid There I just left it No, really, I did!
With each passing week my heart still aches remembering my son is all that it takes to bring me to tears with each brand new day why won’t this pain just go away?
challenge: write ‘whatever’ comes to mind from viewing the picture
I see the inground pool and I reminisce about years I lived in the countryside. My neighbors on one side purchased inground pools and on the other side of them was those, including I, who could only afford above-ground ones.
Each summer we women would gather around poolside while we watched our young children play and sometimes disagree. There was one game they played where spoken over and over were the words ‘Marco Polo’
If only I could turn back the clock and relive those happier times of my life. Sadly we make decisions based on circumstances and for some of us there are no re-dos.
On occasion I dream about days and nights gone by only dreams often become nightmares – ones I wish ne’er compare to happier yesterdays.
