The Cayuga Island Kids Series

Book excerpt: An ideal way to teach information literacy and leadership skills to 1st to 4th graders—using chocolate chip cookies and glitter pens! The Cayuga Island Kids are five big-hearted friends who solve mysteries and have wonderful adventures together. They are fact detectives who think, brainstorm, research, and work together to follow clues, find answers, and puzzle out solutions. Above all, they are kind, helpful, smart, and resourceful kids who have lots of fun together. Book 1 is based on real events surrounding one of the biggest puzzles of the Great Lakes! The Cayuga Island Kids set off on a hunt for a certain kind of tree and instead unearth a cannonball thought to be from a treasure ship built right on their island that sank in 1679 and was never recovered. As they hunt for clues and follow leads, they discover that the island they live on is home to a whole lot of history. And, it turns out, a whole lot of mystery, too. We all have history in our own backyards, just waiting to be discovered by inquisitive, adventurous, and fun-loving fact detectives! In award-winning Book 2, the Kids rescue a mallard caught in the plastic rings from six-pack of cans. How they go from fishing a plastic bottle out of the creek to bringing the community together to build a recycling bin big enough to hold plenty of plastic makes for a lively adventure. Young readers come to realize the importance of brainstorming, teamwork, community effort, recycling, and friendship. Although we are each just one person, together we can make a BIG difference! In Book 3, Julian and his dad are trying to bake the perfect chocolate chip cookie and Maya is helping with the Make-and-Take-Club. And then two glitter pens go missing. The clues and evidence point to a suspect, But when a classmate shares false information about Julian's cookies and they uncover misinformation when researching explorers, the importance of being a fact detective becomes crystal clear. The Kids learn that you have to have all the facts, not just a fraction of the truth. Young readers will cheer for the Kids on this adventure involving misinformation, faulty assumptions, flour bugs, glitter pens, and chocolate chip cookies.