The Nancy Drew Notebooks #48: The Crazy Carnival Case (2002)

It's time for the annual River Heights Carnival. The big event this year is that Isabelle is performing. She's a big deal start from the town who is only 15 but already has a song on the radio. Nancy and her friends decide to enter all the contests because first prize gets a giant stuffed panda. Isabelle loves pandas, and if any of them win, they'll give the toy to her.

They enter a pie eating contest and lose, but there's a sack race the next day. Everyone who enters gets in a sack and finds the bottom filled with raw eggs. Annoying little Brenda wants to do a story on the awful things happening, but Nancy begs her not to because it might keep people from coming to the carnival. Brenda gives her until Wednesday, which is the next day, to find out who did it.

Their only suspects are Cruncher, this girl who eats all the time, and Orson, a kid who entered a frog in a jumping competition and got disqualified because the judge thought he pushed the animal. They see Henrietta, this chicken who does a bunch of stuff like play the piano, and wonder if he owner is the troublemaker because of the eggs. The chicken lays brown eggs and not white ones though.

Brenda calls them over to show them that a cardboard cut out of Isabelle shows her with black eyes and a mustache. They see Orson walking around and whining and candy bar wrappers around the cut out, which leads them back to the same suspects. Jason, David, and Mike are friends who are suspects in other cases. They never come to the carnival but show up at Nancy's later. The boys claim they hate the carnival because they wanted to be the singer's opening act and were turned down. Even though they say they never went to the carnival, all three have fake tattoos that you can only get there.

Other weird things happen too. Someone steals a gold star from the chicken's tent, which her owner claims is her gold star and that she won't play without it. Someone also covers the game controls with molasses. Brenda claims that she wants to write her story but learns that Nancy suspects Cruncher and wants to go through her bag. She begs to be the one to do it, but the other girl catches her and shoves a pie in her face. Cruncher claims that she no longer hates the carnival because she won the chocolate pudding eating contest. Nancy shows her the candy bar wrappers they found, but Cruncher laughs because they're for coconut candy bars.

The girls also go to Orson's house and confront him, but it turns out that he wasn't even at the carnival on some of the days when weird stuff happens. People keep seeing three kids dressed up as the Three Little Pigs around the carnival. Simon the Pieman provided the pies for the contests and has his kids dress up in the costumes to promote his booth. Nancy stops by for a snack and notices a postcard on his booth. He says his kids sent it from camp and that they're not there this year.

Nancy confronts the pigs, tears off their masks, and finds Jason, David, and Mike. They confess that Simon hired them because he felt bad they couldn't be in the show. She makes them confess to the carnival organizer, and they get banned from coming back. Since Brenda already went to deliver her paper, the girls chase after her. Bess brings along a giant panda she just won.

They manage to get to Brenda right when she shows up at Isabelle's house. The singer opens the door, sees the panda, and falls in love. She asks them to come to her concert the next day and be part of her act. Brenda tears up the newspaper and agrees to write a nice story. Nancy says in the end that when people seek revenge, no one ends, which is quite profound for a little kid.

*Nancy suggests that Brenda write about the ferris wheel, but she scoffs because it's just another ride and people will want to hear about the bad things happening. I think she has a future in journalism.

*Cruncher is the nickname given to a girl from another school who always wins the pie eating competition. She drops out because they switched from banana cream pies to coconut cream pies, and she hates everything coconut.

*Brenda already has her own newspaper and customers. She literally delivers the paper to people on multiple streets.

*I think this is the same Brenda who pops up occasionally in The Nancy Drew Files books who is a reporter. I like the continuity, but I'm not sure why they didn't bring in some of the other characters from the other series.