And NOW, Beau is living with them - in Coop's room! - while his dad is in the hospital. Now suspended from school and grounded, it's going to be harder to gather clues. When Beau Knapp (bully) makes one crack too many about Gramps, Coop snaps. It turns out that the body they discovered was Coop's grandmother, Tabby and Gramps is the prime suspect. They LOVE mysteries and can't wait to start working on the case! Coop and his best friends, twins Justice and Liberty Gordon, were working in the coffee shop the morning of the big news: a body was found buried under the swings at the old playground. His mom Delilah runs A Latte Books, a favorite gathering spot for the locals in this small Georgia town.

His father, a Marine, died five years prior, and now they live in the house where his dad grew up. Diverse Easy Reader | Illustrated ChapterĬooper 'Coop' Goodman and his mom live with his Grandfather ('Gramps').Coop Knows the Scoop is a 2021 Edgar Award nominee for Best Juvenile mystery novel. Read more about Taryn Souders and her books at her author website. Put this on your mystery lists, for sure. You and your readers are going to want to know what the real scoop is, and that’s going to keep all of you reading this book until you get to the end, and its very satisfying conclusion. It’s got all the elements of a good whodunnit: a scandal, a quirky cast of local characters, smart dialogue, fleshed out characters with good backstories that make just about everyone a suspect, and an impending sense of danger that you just know is going to explode when you get these elements mixed together. Written in the first person from Coop’s point of view, I could not put this book down. When Gramps falls under suspicion – they always suspect the spouse, right? – Coop enlists his best friends, twin siblings Liberty and Justice, to help him search for clues and exonerate Gramps. After some DNA testing, the skeleton is revealed to be Coop’s grandmother, Tabby, whom everyone thought left Gramps years ago, when Coop’s dad was little more than a baby. It’s small town life, where everyone knows one another, and it’s pretty idyllic, until the morning a skeleton is discovered buried at the playground. His dad, a Marine, died in action, and his Gramps is the retired town doctor. Cooper Goodman – call him Coop, please! – lives with his mom and grandfather in Georgia, where he helps out in his mom’s bookstore/coffee shop when he’s not in school. That’s how good this middle grade mystery is.

I pulled Coop Knows the Scoop off my TBR yesterday morning, and I finished it this morning.

Coop Knows the Scoop, by Taryn Souders, (July 2020, Sourcebooks Young Readers), $7.99, ISBN: 9781492640189

Coop knows the scoop