Book Review: Meddling Kids

By Ryland Johnson

As a child, you probably read a story about kids solving crimes (Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, the Boxcar Children, the Hardy Boys, etc.). Childrens mystery has been a foundational genre of youth literature for more than a hundred years, informing our pop-cultural sensibilities from Harry Potter to Scooby-Doo. A bunch of curious kids work together (perhaps alongside a lovable dog) to unmask the villain. Its a story weve enjoyed since Oliver Twist.

Edgar Canteros Meddling Kids trades on the legacy of childrens mystery by imagining the adult lives of former child detectives. Spoiler alert its dark. Some messed up things happened in the haunted mansion, things that people dont talk about. For years. Meddling Kids picks up the story of the Blyton Summer Detective Club in recovery, with scars both physical and mental, as they return to Blyton Hills for one last case: to find out what really happened back then.

This author is not the first to take up the exercise of adultifying a beloved childrens tale. But Cantero manages to both reward and challenge expectations. He delivers the beats and tropes like a pro, but with enough sass and creativity in language to keep it fresh and satisfying. Saccharine moments are countered with cold, punch-in-the-gut realism. Under it all, there is a nuanced, often bittersweet meditation on the nature of storytelling. What do we do when we start telling the stories we were told when we were kids? Theres something true about the horror of it all, discovering that fairy tale kids are usually eaten by wolves, that the little mermaid was turned into seafoam. Meddling Kids is poignant because it realizes the horror of the adult perspective.

Cantero clearly loves the source material as well. Meddling Kids is as much a love letter to Where the Red Fern Grows as it is to Scooby-Doo. His enthusiasm for adventure is infectious, filling the book with plenty of campy, spooky fun, but he has also captured the feeling of summer camp, the melodrama of teenage yearning, and the razor-sharp danger of innocent youthful recklessness.