Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #13: Chick-Napped (2008)

Nancy, Bess, and George have a teacher named Mrs. Ramirez who decided to do a project on animals. She brought in eggs and an incubator and had the kids write journals about the eggs' development over the last few weeks. At the beginning of the book, it's time for the eggs to hatch. Tommy, one of their classmates, is super excited because he's obsessed with the chicks. He even wrote them poems and songs.

Catherine, another girl in their class, is less than excited. See, it's actually her birthday and no one cares. Right when Mrs. Ramirez gathers the class together to sing her Happy Birthday, the chicks start hatching. Nancy and the girls feel bad for Catherine though and make her a super special birthday card. When they show up to class the next day, they find that someone defaced Tommy's special sign with a blue-green marker that smells like bubblegum.

Though the girls do some investigating, they can only find a few people in class with that same color marker and none smell like bubblegum. When they go back to class, they learn that someone stole the poor chicks' food. Since no one confesses to the theft, they all have to write a paper on why stealing is wrong. While everyone else whispers about what happened, Nancy finds a button that she knows came off the thief.

The kids have a weekend away, but when they come back on Monday, they find out that someone stole the chicks! Given the title of the book, I wondered when that would happen. It turns out that Mrs. Ramirez asked the school janitor to feed the chicks for her over the weekend. She left at three on Friday and he came in at five to find them gone. He assumed that she changed her mind and took them home with her.

Nancy suspects Antonio, this prankster from their class. He makes a bunch of jokes about feeding the chicks to his cat and says Bess's dress looks like dog vomit but clearly isn't the culprit. They then stop by to see Catherine and find her mom sewing on a red button and find a blue-green marker that smells like bubblegum. Catherine admits to stealing the food and ruining the sign, but she sprained her ankle on Thursday and wasn't in school on Friday, so she didn't steal the chicks.

While out for pizza with Hannah, Bess sees Antonio carrying a box into a nearby restaurant and flips out. She assumes that he stole the chicks and wants to sell them as fried chicken. It turns out that it's his parents' restaurant and that he was just helping his dad bring in some new menus. Hannah surprisingly enough takes these little kids into a fancy french restaurant though, which kills me.

The next day at school, Nancy sees Tommy reading a book on how to care for baby chickens. Before she can accuse him of being the thief, Gaby – another classmate – shows up and accuses him. She takes the book as evidence. Nancy asks to borrow it later, which makes Gaby nervous. After reading a few pages, she announces that she knows who stole the chicks.

It turns out that it was Gaby. She heard Antonio joke about the chicks becoming fried chicken and stole them to protect them. Since her family has their own farm, she just hid them in a barn. Nancy and the Clue Crew show up to confront her, and she agrees to bring the chickens back. The whole class gets super happy, Nancy makes an egg joke about cracking the case, and then we get a craft project on how to make a garden from an egg carton.

*The kids made a drawing of a chicken and wrote mom on it before pasting in on the incubator, which is adorable.

*Hannah does a make your own taco night, and Nancy makes hers with cheese, refried beans, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, guacamole, and salsa. Hannah also makes pineapple salsa, which I'm not sure most kids that age would eat.

*Nancy calls the marker color blue-green, but George and Bess fight over whether it's turquoise or aquamarine. Bess absolutely knows it's aquamarine because she has a skirt the same color LOL.

*Mrs. Ramirez makes everyone write an essay on respect after finding the defaced sign, everyone but Tommy. That seems a little unfair, even if he did make the sign. He does have to write the stealing is wrong paper though.

*For a slumber party at her house, Hannah makes pizza flavored popcorn, buttered popcorn, caramel popcorn, and hot chocolate. I need a Hannah!

*This girl Gaby also likes solving mysteries and shows them her own notebook with a bunch of theories in it. They kind of rudely blow her off because they don't think her theories make sense.