While visiting the campus of Fenster March College, Ellen and Beagle solve a variety of mysteries. The reader is challenged to solve the mysteries before Ellen and Beagle by interpreting clues in the text.
Jackie was the author of more than fifteen books, including the hugely successful Super Sleuth series, published in hardcover by Putnam and later as best-selling book club paperbacks. In addition to mysteries for intermediate readers, her books include picture books; award-winning short story collections; and nonfiction, ranging from textbooks to the widely acclaimed, co-edited We Wait in the Darkness: An Anthology of American Indian Prose and Poetry. A review in The New York Times Book Review called one of her short stories “simply perfect.”
Super Sleuth was a “Best Book” selection of the American Child Study Association and was serialized on the PBS television program The Reach-Around Gang. A Trick of the Light, Chills Run Down My Spine, and Chills in the Night, her collections of short stories for the fifth grade and up, have all garnered critical acclaim, Trick having been nominated for the Carolyn W. Field Award and for Pennsylvania’s “Keystone to Reading” award, and was a finalist for the American Library Association Booklist’s “Notables.” “Reading to Matthew,” originally published as one story in A Trick of the Light was later published on its own as an illustrated book for intermediate readers, and was named a “Best Book” selection by Young Book Trust of the United Kingdom. Some of her magazine articles and short stories for adults have been reprinted in several anthologies.
Jupiter Press has republished the Super Sleuth series under the books’ original titles and the three short-story collections in two new volumes entitled Night Vision and Night Vision II (2011-2013).
A former college English professor, she taught courses in literature and writing and authored two textbooks on creative writing including Writing Fiction: A Handbook for Creative Writing.