Book Review: Claudia and the Clue in the Photograph

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Claudia and the Clue in the Photograph (Baby-Sitters Club Mystery #16)

Author: Ann M. Martin

Author's web site: http://www.scholastic.com/annmartin/

Date: 1994

Publisher: Scholastic

ISBN: 0-590-47054-X

Length: 153 pages

Quote: "I was especially fascinated with the facade of the old Stoneybrook bank building."

For an art project Claudia snaps lots of photographs of the bank building. Then they learn that one of the bank's employees has been misplacing or misappropriating money, and in Stoneybrook, where even the thirteen-year-old Baby-Sitters have a bank account, there's a lot of money to be stolen. Claudia, the artist and Nancy Drew fan, suspects a man who's wearing two watches, one of which doesn't work.

On the Lost Planet of Nice, where Stoneybrook is, even bank robbers are likely to be nice people who have gone wrong. I can't believe the solution to the mystery would play out in such a simple, instructive way--in front of meddling children, at that!--on Earth, but in the Baby-Sitters' world it probably happens all the time. BSC mysteries are almost as cozy as Encyclopedia Brown's use-your-general-knowledge-to-catch-Earth's-Least-Competent-Criminals mysteries.

Hmm...this is the third of three BSC books this web site has reviewed lately, and all three feature Claudia. There's a reason for this. Children don't always go for the fashion dolls who look like them; some children think Barbie is supposed to be blonde, and some have a real collector's instinct to acquire one of each of as many types of fashion dolls as possible. There is, however, a local market that calls itself "Indian Mountain," where anything that fits into the Cherokee/pioneer/frontier-days theme seems to sell. Claudia Kishi is Japanese-American, in the books, but since fashion dolls don't really look all that much like humans of any type, for doll buyers there it seems to be all the same thing. Dolls with long black hair, tan skin, and dark eyes sold...and since then I've received more books to match to that type of dolls. 

Although you can certainly get secondhand copies of Claudia and the Clue in the Photograph for less than $10 (or $11 online), that $5 per book, $5 per package, $1 per online payment, system is what funds this web site's Fair Trade Books system. When you pay this price, first of all you get to fill a box for $5, which makes it cheaper for you to buy eight or ten BSC books from this web site and pay one $5 shipping charge than it would be to buy eight or ten BSC books from different sellers on Amazon and pay eight or ten separate shipping charges. Then, for each book you order for which we can locate a living author, we send 10% of the total cash price to that author or a charity of her or his choice. So, if you buy eight regular BSC novels or mysteries, or ten BSC books including some of the skinnier "Little Sister" books, Martin or her charity gets $8 or $10; if you buy only one, Martin or her charity gets $1. 

As regular readers remember, it's also possible to order dolls dressed to match a book for $10 per doll; if you choose that option, you could order up to four BSC dolls and books for a total of $65 (U.S. postal money order to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322) or $66 (Paypal payment to the account you get by e-mailing salolianigodagewi) to the appropriate address at the very bottom of the screen. From that $65, Martin or her charity would receive $6.50.