• Age: 12 to 15
• Grade: 7 to 10
• Reading age: 12 to 15

Casey Templeton is in a bind when he must foil a burglary of dinosaur bones.

While helping with a real dinosaur dig at the world-famous Royal Tyrrell Museum, Casey Templeton finds a piece of dinosaur tooth. Excited, he spends all afternoon looking for the rest of the tooth, but all he ends up getting is a nasty sunburn. Lying in his hotel room that night, trying to recover, he sees and hears two men in a nearby room planning a robbery of precious artifacts from the Tyrrell.

Later, Casey tells the museum’s curator (and old family friend), Dr. Norman, what he has seen and heard. Dr. Norman hires Casey to keep a watch out at the museum for the robbers. No luck.

As the summer comes to an end, Casey and his friend Mandy decide to relax and take a bicycle jaunt north of Drumheller. But on the road they accidentally meet up with the conspirators and soon find themselves in a grim situation. Casey has to use all his ingenuity and skills to escape so he can try to help thwart the planned heist. Can he do it?

Gwen Molnar is a poet, painter, and writer of children's fiction. She is the author of three poetry collections for children, I Said to Sam, Animal Rap and Far Out Fables, and Just Because, A Collection of Light Verse and Nonsense, as well as three Sebastian first chapter books, an early chapter book, No Presents Please, the first Casey Templeton Mystery, Hate Cell, and Hazel’s Rainbow Ride, with Barbara Hartman as illustrator. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

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The engaging story, likeable characters, and lack of specific targeting of one gender as a reader make this a good book for children in its intended age range. Throw in the fact that the book’s set in the Royal Tyrell Museum and that Casey starts out the book on a dinosaur dig, and you have a recipe for a mystery even reluctant readers will pick up off the shelf, especially those who are in their dinosaur-obsessed phase.

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