Young Adult Revisited

  Most of the small girls in River Heights are in Madame Durgrand's ballet class. Bess was sick and missed a few classes, which explains why she keeps messing up her steps. She needs to figure it out because they have a big recital coming up. Their teacher picked some kids to have solo dances from Peter Pan and arranged group dances for everyone else. Nancy and her friends get to be mermaids. Brenda is unhappy that the teacher gave the Wendy solo to her friend Alison and stops talking to her. When they get ready for a rehearsal, Dugrand finds that someone stole the only tape of their music. Brenda immediately blames Bess because she was the last person backstage. Jerry, the janitor, is also a suspect. He has to keep putting off his personal life because of rehearsals and has to give up concert tickets he bought for his girlfriend's birthday for the big show. Nancy sees Paul, their teacher's young son playing around, too. The only clue she has is an Eiffel Tower charm...

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. T...

Nancy's class is in the middle of a science fair. George's dad helped her create a mobile of the planets on a wood base. Jason, one of the boys in their class, steals the bubbles that Nancy and Bess used for their project and starts tossing it around the room with these boys Andrew and David. The bottle knocks into the mobile, and one of the planets breaks. Mrs. Reynolds, their teachers, tells George that she can fix it in the morning. When they get back the next day though, someone already fixed it. They left a note behind on paper with smiley faces on it, and Nancy finds a bottle of empty glue under the table. George tells them that she got a few other notes on the same paper and thought it was Bess because her family has the same paper. Nancy decides to investigate and find the culprit. Andrew and Jason are the two main suspects. One note says that George is pretty, and Andrew keeps showing up to compliment her on random things. Jason shows off his project, w...

River Heights got 10 inches of snow, which means that school is closed for the day. Nancy meets up with George and Bess to go sledding and run into their friend Molly who has a way cooler sled than any of them. They do a few runs and then run into another friend named Rebecca. She's mad because her brother ruined his sled, their mom made them share hers, and he took off with it. They agree to let her share with them. Todd, the brother, shows up when it's time to leave. He gives her back her sled and tells her it's her turn before leaving. She's mad because he made her drag it all the way there and now she has to take it home. Rebecca wants to stay but can't because she has to help her mom shovel their sidewalk. Some high school kids come out too, and one nearly knocks Bess down. The girls decide to get some hot chocolate from Hilda's Hot Chocolate and take a short break. It tastes like crap, and when George goes to see if she has any marshmallows, ...

Bess and George call Nancy for help after Bess's new locket goes missing. She took it off to jump rope and asked George to hold it for her. George instead put it in her backpack and when she came back, it was gone. Someone left a sandwich with mustard, ketchup, relish, and peanut butter in its place. George gets distracted and wants to show off her picture from the paper, which leads Bess to saying that she'll never speak to her again. The two girls get into a huge fight that ends with Bess tearing up the picture and the two storming off. Nancy sticks around to make up her suspect list, which includes this mean girl named Brenda and another girl named Karen. She suspects Karen even more after seeing her riffling through a coat that isn't hers. Karen claims she just wanted a piece of gum from her friend's jacket. Bess agrees to help investigate the case as long as George isn't around. She gives Nancy a list of all the kids who were around that day, whic...

As a special treat for her class, the school arranged for the kids to take a tour of Zuckerman's Zonked, which is candy factory in town. Mr. Zuckerman, who inherited the factory from his dad, gives them a tour and lets them sample some new candies. He makes a big deal out of his new candy, which will last as long as an all day sucker, be as sweet as chocolate, and as chewy as caramel. After showing them the recipe, he puts it in his pocket and gives them a tour of the library. It's only after going through some recipe books that he realizes his own recipe is missing. Nancy names her first and primary suspect as Josie, a girl in her class who wants to run her own candy company one day. Mr. Zuckerman tells them that the secret ingredient is maple syrup, which is why Nancy gets suspicious walking by Josie's house that night and smelling maple syrup. Josie shows up to school the next day with a new candy that tastes gross. She wanted to recreate the recipe for him. ...

It's Friday at Nancy's school, which means that it's library day. She instantly heads to the mystery section and picks out a Marvin Sandback book, her favorite author. Andy, one of the guys in her class, whines about how books suck and comics are always better. Their teacher then gathers them together with some news: Julia, the owner of the Book Nook in town, is Mr. Sandback's daughter and is having a big party that weekend to release his new book. She also wants to present him with a first edition copy of his very first book, which is rare and worth a bundle. Mrs. Marvin takes Bess and George, while Carson takes Nancy. They run into Anderson, who works there, and sees him with a fancy wood box. He tries to keep the book a secret until he learns that they already know, but then he refuses to let them see inside. They try to play with Charlie, the shop cat, but the cat freaks out and hisses at them. Sandback then comes in and has them all sit down so...

Carson decides to take Bess, George, and Nancy to his clients' house for a holiday party. Mr. and Mrs. Gangi have twin daughters, Jo and Mia, and invited family and friends to their party. He tells the entire group that his grandfather had a special carousel horse built for the grounds but that it later went missing. The twins found the horse accidentally, and he wants to reveal it to everyone as a special celebration. Before he can though, the girls suddenly start screaming. It turns out that Mr. Gangi wanted to let the kids play and try to grab the brass ring like carousel riders did in the good old days. Someone stole the brass ring though and left behind a note to leave the horses alone or face big trouble. It was signed TG, which are the initials of the owner's grandfather. Bess volunteers Nancy to solve the mystery, which the adults agree to for who knows why. Nancy notices Brenda there, but Brenda refuses to explain why she didn't follow the screams l...