The Sherlock Society: Art Attack, AKA, The Sherlock Society 3 knows its family, and its role. It’s very important to know your role. The Sherlock Society is the literary sibling to City Spies, which is the literary best friend to Spy School. Note that the first two series are related and the third one is RIYL. The Sherlock Society is mid-elementary through middle school as middle school metaphorical manna. Art Attack is a fun, confidence-building romp that’s got travel, age-appropriate relationships, a surprisingly twisty plot and characters audiences will grow along with.
Cartoon characters don’t age. Charlie Brown is always the same age and Calvin continued his imaginary adventures in a state of arrested development. There’s a floating timeline in mglit that allows those characters to always be roughly the same age as they remember. In The Sherlock Society, Yadi, Lina, Zoe and Alex address their middle school status several times. Will they always be this age or will they get older as the books continue? It will be interesting to see how Ponti addresses that.
In the second book, Hurricane Heist, they achieved a degree of local notoriety by solving a crime that probably took place during a storm. Again, Art Attack is the third book in The Sherlock Society series, but the first one that we’ve read. Art Attack starts out with the action in the way that Lethal Weapon 2 started off with a car chase. To make things even more intriguing, especially given the youth angle in The Sherlock Society, is that it’s a trio of police officers doing most of the talking. Alex has just been arrested for spray painting a building and the three are talking about the case and figuring out what to do with him.
Alex’s mother is an attorney, so he’s full of half-answers that the officers have to confirm or clarify. From there, the book goes back in time three weeks and checks in on the group of kids. The four kids are talking at lunch. They’re in middle school together and are trying to determine their next case, and so far it’s a cute girl who is giving two of the boys some attention that’s looking like the next case. It’s only then they discover that the ‘case’ involves her finding out why a boy at school doesn’t like her that another member of the group intervenes.
Thankfully, their website has yielded a stronger case, and Grandpa is going to pick them up after school to check it out. They’re going to a local real estate developer because they’re looking to identify a famous graffiti artist. The developer wants to find this artist so that they hire them to do a large mural for an upcoming project. Funky Munky is known in the area due to their distinctive style and the cartoonish monkey they sign with.
The problem is that graffiti artists are notoriously shy. How can the Sherlock Society find someone who doesn’t want to be found, all the while getting through middle school? Much like James Ponti’s other books, Art Attack maintains a sense of age-appropriate realism. It’s fanciful and requires a leap of faith, but it’s based in reality. The kids have access to a high-quality drone that allows them to investigate inside old building. Grandpa is always game to transport the kids around Miami. They’re able to quickly gain the trust of a popular podcast producer. Two of the kids get in trouble are grounded. That last one was certainly more realistic, and it’s woven into the plot with the others that require a grain of salt.
Art Attack is upper-elementary through middle school fun. The chapters run with energy and will give those ages a sense of like-minded wonder. The events in the book are just on this side of plausible to make kids believe it could be them.
Fans of City Spies could consider this the younger sibling of that series. City Spies crosses the line of plausibility, but just barely. Those characters are also a bit older and the story is slightly more complex. It’s also a bigger group of characters and deal with the globe-trotting issue that a pack of middle school students don’t. City Spies is a book series that’s effortlessly readable for a wide range of people. It’s capable of being read by upper-elementary kids, but has the wherewithal to be demo up through high school audiences.
The Sherlock Society: Art Attack will stay in the lower realm of that demographic. This is the book, and to an extent, the series, that could bridge early readers to chapter books. The chapters are around ten pages in length and the text isn’t as small as the books their parents are reading. It’s not intimidating to reluctant readers and the youth who are illustrated on the cover make it clear about the book’s audience.
It will be interesting to see if the characters or situations get older and more mature as the series continues. There’s space in the mglit world for a more grounded series that kids want to read. Art Attack is the introverts’ mglit answer to, ‘what am I going to read next?’, although it’s not entirely just for those kids.
The Sherlock Society: Art Attack is by James Ponti and is available on Aladdin, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
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