Enigma: A Magical Mystery [Hardcover]

To date, Animalia, The Eleventh Hour, and The Waterhole are my favorite of Graeme Base's offerings. Animalia and The Waterhole are read frequently in our home to teach ABCs and 1-10 counting as well as observation skills, and also for some good old fashioned fun reading aloud with fun and different voices!!

My spouse and I enjoy reading The Eleventh Hour because of all the mysteries to solve - the hidden images, the hidden puzzles, and the clues interspersed between text and illustration.

I was excited to see the newest offering, Enigma. I immediately signed up to pre-order. I am grateful that I did! This book is wonderful! The rhyme is similar to the text in Base's other books - occasionally forced, but still fun to read! Perhaps it's because of all the time I've spent pouring over the Eleventh Hour, but many of the hidden clues were easy to find and decipher in this book.

Our elementary-school-aged children find the mystery in this book to be perfect! One is even trying to break the cipher without resorting to opening the key in the back of the book.

The story is engaging and entertaining. Young Bertie Badger goes from room-to-room in the Entertainers' retirement home to solve the mystery of the missing props. Each page, each entertainer, represtents a different country. Like Animalia, like The Waterhole, like so many of Base's other books, the details of the backdrops add significantly to the richness and the texture of the tale he weaves.

If you're looking for Base's best mystery book - buy the Eleventh Hour. If you're looking for a fun mystery with a cipher-code to break, great for an elementary reader, buy this book! It has become a treasured addition to my Graeme Base collection.

Animalia (Picture Puffins)
The Water Hole
Eleventh Hour

I LOVE Graeme Base and if you are not familiar with him or his books, you should be. His books and art work is phenominal. This is my daughters favorite book by Base followed by Animalia. She likes to find the hidden pictures on each page. This book has a code you have to unlock at the end of the book and it is so much fun. My daughter is 5 and she has me read it to her at least 3 times a day. This is a wonderful book and I swear it will be a good investment to any book lover.

Graeme Base is easily my favorite children's book author/illustrator, and 'Enigma' provided my daughter's 3/4th grade combo class one of the most delightful hours of the entire school year! I purchased 3 copies of the book so all the kids could be close enough to see the beautifully detailed illustrations, made 25 copies of the coded message and the key, then went in and read the book to the class one morning. Afterwards, the class broke up into groups of 4 and began deciphering the coded messages, passing the 3 books among the groups to find the hidden objects where the decoded messages said they would be. It was a race to the finish, and I easily had as much fun as the kids did! Graeme you're an absolute treasure! After you fall in love with 'Enigma', make sure you also grab 'The Discovery of Dragons' and, best of all, 'The Worst Band in the Universe'. (I've been known to read that one even without kids around!)