Science Sleuths: Forensics For Kids

As a homeschool educator, I'm always sleuthing out new opportunities to integrate the sciences with the arts in my lesson plans. Recently, I was delighted to learn that the Science Museum of Richmond has a forensic science exhibit for kids. "Science Sleuths" is a hands-on opportunity for kids to explore the science of the human body, while developing their deductive reasoning skills.

Kids get a first hand look at the various ways forensic scientists help law enforcement professionals solve crimes. Exhibits explore the our DNA, and how our uniqueness enables investigators to narrow the scope of possible suspects. How forensic artists use witness observations to recreate an image of a suspect's face. How forensic anthropologists use what they know about human bones to identify the features of decomposed bodies. How our own digestive system can reveal the secret of a victim's last meal, or the presence of a particular insect can shed light on the approximate time of death.

These kinds of activities can become fuel for engaging creative writing projects, and home or classroom based experiments. Don't worry if you don't have a "Science Sleuths" exhibit at your local museum. You can easily create opportunities like this on your own!

For example, The Barrie School in Silver Spring, MD recently offered their students a one week forensic science program, where students were given a fabricated crime scene, and the tools to solve it.

The summer months also offer unique opportunities for kids to explore science through summer camp programs like this one, offered through the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. Too far from home? Try Googling forensic science camps near you. You'll be surprised how many are offered through your local museums, universities, and recreation centers.

Like this summer camp, sponsored by the Seattle Science Foundation, where students perform crime scene investigation, forensic anthropology, fingerprinting, serology, toxicology, hair analysis, DNA analysis, and forensic psychology.

If you're an educator looking for ways to include forensic science in your curriculum, I've found some websites you should check out.

The Kids' Science Challenge offers entire units on forensic science with a downloadable curriculum for grades 2 - 12, including reading suggestions, writing topics, experiments, and discussion prompts. Click this link, then scroll a third of the way down to the section called Detective Science Project.

The Science Spot Kid Zone provides an organized list of links to websites featuring activities, experiments, videos, and resources about forensic science. Find information on everything from fingerprinting, blood analysis, entomology, accident reconstruction, and our favorite -- mysteries. For teachers, they offer links to complete lesson plans on a variety of forensic topics, such as hair and fiber analysis, DNA, chromatography, impressions, and more.

Are you a teacher or parent who's found an exciting way to introduce forensic science to your student? Have you participated in a forensic science program you think we should share with our readers? Respond in the comments and let us know! We want to hear from you.

ELLE COSIMANO set aside a successful real-estate career to pursue writing. She lives with her husband and two young sons, and divides her time between her home near Washington, DC and a jungle tree house in the Mayan Riveria. Her YA novel NEARLY GONE will be published by Kathy Dawson Books/Penguin in March 2014, with a sequel coming in 2015. Learn more about Elle on her website, twitter, facebook, and Goodreads.

Notes from a Lockdown Zone

Last week, I started drafting a cheerful post for this blog. It was about mystery and thriller books I'd read recently. In preparation for a workshop I'm teaching, I've discovered many new and exciting novels for young readers , and I've been looking forward to discussing my reading binge: great, page-turning mysteries and thrillers for kids.

Then I was interrupted. Real-life crimes, with real-life criminals, were unfolding in the news. In my hometown.

In Boston, where I've lived since 1994, an event dear to our hearts -- the marathon -- was attacked by bombers. Days later, my suburban town was in lockdown, and then our whole city. A manhunt took place a mile and a half away from my house.

In the photo to the left you see the view from my dining room window. It's small in this picture, but what looks like a bird in the middle is actually one of the helicopters looking for the suspected bomber #2. These helicopters were our constant companions from Thursday night -- they woke us up -- all the way until the dramatic capture on Friday night. At times they flew so close they rattled our windows. Even after the lockdown officially ended around 5:30 pm on Friday, the suspect still at large, the helicopters continued. Then crescendoed. As our dishes vibrated on the dinner table, my husband and I just looked at each other. "This isn't over," we agreed. Sure enough, the suspect had been spotted in a boat in a backyard, and the authorities were cornering him.

For an entire day, we did not leave our house. Nobody did. I will forever remember the eerie duet of birdsong and helicopters, because that's all we heard on Friday. No children played outside despite the gorgeous weather. No work got done. My husband's business, like businesses all over our town, had to close. My childcare plans were cancelled -- no school for my kindergartner -- which meant I couldn't work either. I envied those birds their freedom to go about their business. Thousands of people were similarly paralyzed, riveted to the news -- or, worse, mourning loved ones hurt or killed in the blasts.

Although the writer in me is always curious about new experiences, I can report that there's nothing exciting about being told to "shelter at home." Other feelings roil. Like anger about the numerous victims of this senseless crime spree. Like impatience. (When will this end? How will it end?) Panic. (Please don't let this play out anywhere near my street. Please stay down on your end of School Street. And can my husband take the trash out to the garage, or will a helicopter spot movement and zoom in?) Dread --robocalls from town police and alerts from the school where my husband teaches advised us to keep our doors locked, and only answer the door to uniformed police officers. (Only it wasn't just police officers going door-to-door. This caused some confusion to some of my young son's classmates, whose houses were searched not by familiar-looking officers in blue, but by SWAT teams with different uniforms and "noisy boots.") More dread -- could the guy be seeking shelter in our backyard? Behind our garage? (I kept chastising myself for that paranoid thought, until, of course, he did actually turn up in someone's backyard, outside the 20-block search zone).

Oh, and there was boredom. Lots of boredom while waiting for updates and trying to entertain our young son indoors, hour after hour after hour. We built every Lego creation ever designed. We played with everything. Watched happy movies. A snow day with no snow.

Our house was not searched, as we were outside the 20-block zone they were sweeping. We didn't hear gunfire or explosions from the awful events on Thursday night. But these events were close enough to feel extremely uncomfortable. I could have jogged twenty-minutes to where they found the guy in the end. The staging area for police and press conferences was in the parking lot of my local Target, where I run weekly errands. TV footage showed armored vehicles rolling place the little pink trattoria where my husband and I go for occasional date nights, and by where my child takes swim classes. I live in a town that borders Watertown, and consider it an extension of my neighborhood. My kid goes to school in that town. I write in the library there. I spend over 50% of my time in Watertown. 

Now in the aftermath, in the midst of the inevitable media hype and speculations, I find myself looking at the list of mysteries and thrillers I've been reading, the books I wanted to write about. And looking my own book, the mystery/thriller I am supposed to be revising at this very moment. And I find myself in literary lockdown. Whenever there is a big act of violence reported in the news -- such as Newtown a few months ago, and now this -- I experience a period of paralysis, followed by introspection.

Here's where I'm at. Young people are affected by violent crimes in real life -- as victims or as perpetrators. They are also, like us adults, living in the world, and affected by what they hear in the news.

Do those of us who write about crime, for young readers, have a moral imperative to handle this subject with extra care? Are mysteries and thrillers for kids and teens more than entertaining page-turners? Can they also help kids understand why people make certain choices, and what the consequences of those choices might be? Can thrillers help readers grasp how the world is no longer the same place once humans have been harmed? Can mysteries remind young readers that good can prevail, that justice must be served?

What do we want young mystery/thriller readers to take away from their fictional brushes with crime?

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Diana Renn grew up in Seattle and now lives outside of Boston with her husband and young son. TOKYO HEIST (Viking/Penguin, June 2012) is her first novel. Her next YA mystery, LATITUDE ZERO, will be published by Viking in 2014. She is also the Fiction Editor at YARN (Young Adult Review Network).

Laura Ellen: Why I write 'crime'

Welcome to "Case Files From Our Detectives." Every Tuesday, in rotation, we blog on a topic relevant to the craft of mystery writing. If you're a new follower or just discovering us now, you can check out past Case Files in the archives; they're all listed in the upper right sidebar.

Today we're continuing with our topic of CRIME in MG and YA fiction. with a bit about why Laura Ellen writes about crime. 

In her Crime Case File post, Elisa Ludwig talked about a mother who, when she discovered that the MC in Pretty Crooked is a thief, put it down, noting that she doesn't condone crime. Although I understood this mother's point -- as a mom I worry about what my kids are exposed to also -- this story kind of bothered me. It took me a little while, but I finally figured out why. Once I did, though, I felt it was important to share.

Let me explain.

The first novel I ever finished was a MG about a girl whose mom and step-father are killed in a car accident and she must go live with her real dad while her half-brother goes to live with her aunt and cousins. Now this novel will never see the light of day. It was my first attempt at a novel and is riddled with newbie-mistakes and dripping with melodrama. But, my point in writing it, besides seeing if I could finish a novel, was not to get published -- it was to work out a fear I had. At that time, my husband and I had just sat down to make out our will. I realized that if something were to happen to us, there was a good chance our kids would be seperated from one another -- my daughter going to live with her father and my son, most likely to an aunt or grandparent. The thought of them growing up without each other terrified me. So, I explored the situation the only way I knew how -- by writing about it.

Throughout my whole life this has been how I've dealt with things that scared me. From attending a new school to walking down a dark alley alone at night, anytime something made me frightened or anxious, I would play it out in my head, coming up with extreme scenarios and how I might respond, so that I'd be prepared for anything.

I think books do this for people too. Reading is a way to explore things that fascinate or scare or bother us. It is a way to look into those 'dark' things without having to actually live through them. It is a safe way to experiment and observe.

So, coming back to the mother at Elisa's book event. While I get her response -- like I said, I am a mom and yes, I watch what my kids read/watch/play -- I don't agree. No matter how well we raise our kids and no matter how sheltered we think we keep them from the monstrosities of life -- kids are people, and people live. They see, hear, observe, deduce, think, talk, and interact. In the course of doing these very human things, they will be faced with a situation or decision that their parents didn't expect or plan for them.

Whether it's that unbelievably charming bad boy in art class, or that expensive new phone everyone else has, or that downstairs window that accidentally broke -- everybody has that moment where a choice must be made. Sometimes that choice leads down the wrong road -- and once on that road ANYTHING can happen. The people that fare the best and find their way back are the ones who have thought it through, played out the vatious outcomes, seen the big picture. What better place to get that pre-exposure than in the safety of a book?

That's why I write about dark, edgy topics like crime. I like to think of the worst thing that could happen and then find a way to get my characters out of it. I do this not only because in real life bad stuff happens, but also because I want to be prepared, and  I want my readers to be preapared. I want them to know that if something similar happens, they'll not only be ready. They'll live through it.

Maybe that seems idealistic.
But no more idealistic than thinking if you don't bring that book home, your child won't be exposed to whatever is inside that book. For me, reading about life's dark side is a better solution than pretending it doesn't exist.

As a parent, my solution is to bring home that book that may have questionable content in it and read it myself -- instead of avoiding it. That way, I know what to expect and can discuss it if necessary with my kids. I can also make an informed decision on whether or not the material is too mature and should be shelved for a bit. And for those wondering about Pretty Crooked, since it is the book that began this discussion. It is a great book and definitely worth the read. :)

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Going There: Scene of the Crime

Here's the thing. When you write about fictional crimes...you kind of have to go there. What I mean is if you're writing about a burglary, you have to figure out exactly how it went down. Did the thief come through the window, or the door? Were people home, or were they on vacation with a bunch of newspapers piled up on the porch? What about the guard dog?

This can make for some amusing brainstorming sessions, particularly if you're writing something humorous/lighthearted. Like where the burglar is a woodchuck breaking into the acorn vault of the meanest, richest squirrel in the forest. Ha-ha. Good times.

BUT...there's the other side of it, too. The side where your story isn't lighthearted, the hero isn't a squirrel, and the crime isn't about stealing some mean creature's acorns. Like in my novel WHISPERTOWN, a boy named Eli dies under mysterious circumstances. You'll have to read it to know the truth behind the tragedy, but long before the story was a completed first draft, I had to go there. An amusing brainstorming session it was not. I had to think about Eli's life, had to imagine cutting it short, then walk through the emotions of the loved ones he left behind. These are very real things, even if used in a fictional context. Such emotions can be hard to write, and hard to read. So, for writers who have to go there, some things to keep in mind:

Know Your Audience

A brutal, life and death crime may not be appropriate for all audiences. Knowing that ahead of time may stop you from taking the ill-advised step of writing a story about something particularly vile (I'm sure you don't need examples here) then trying to market it to the Middle-Grade set. I knew that my novel would broach subjects only suitable for older teens, topics like realistic violence and sex. I'm not saying there's not a skillful way to present such subject matter to younger readers, but that brings me to my next point...

Know What You Can Get Away With

If you're working on the Woodchuck Burglar story, extreme detail is probably the way to go. Go wild, write about the Acorn Vault blueprints, and the double-crossing Blue Bird, and the treetop chase scene in full High-Definition prose. Writing about the death of a classmate in a modern, recognizable high school, may require a little more subtlety. Even writing for older teens I knew I couldn't give them full access to the scene as I envisioned it. So I scaled it back, made the description of the darker moments sparse, leaving room for the reader to imagine the rest on their own.

Know the Details

In order to write sparse, you actually need to know more (much more) detail than you're probably comfortable with. The more you know, the better sense you have of what can be alluded to, or what can be excluded all together. I know more about discovering a dead body than I care to. Lucky for you, I won't be passing on my vast knowledge. Well, not all of it.

Know the Way Back

Writing mysteries is more than just dreaming up a compelling hero. You have to dream up the villain, and their crime. You have to go there. That's not the hardest part, though. Once you go into the dark place, you still have to find your way back...

If you don't think that's a manageable trip, stick to Woodchuck Burglars.

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Lamar "L. R." Giles writes for adults and teens. Penning everything from epic fantasy to noir thrillers, he's never met a genre he didn't like. His debut YA mystery WHISPERTOWN is about a teen in witness protection who investigates his best friend's murder and stumbles on a dark conspiracy that leads back to his own father. It will be published in Summer, 2013 by HarperCollins. He resides in Virginia with his wife and is represented by Jamie Weiss Chilton of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. Find out more on his website, Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

Crime in the Middle

Today we're continuing with our topic of CRIME in middle grade and YA fiction.

In my last “Case File from Our Detectives,” I floated the theory that so many mysteries for middle graders are set in the past or in fantastical worlds because sometimes it can be very difficult to create high stakes in contemporary real-world settings. In a surreal setting like, say, THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY, readers will easily accept that kids are responsible for saving the world from evil. A real world setting, in contrast, immediately raises questions about why adult authorities are so inept.

Crime and middle grade mystery are indeed a difficult mix. Scan your daily paper or online crime blotters you’ll discover that most real crimes involve a good deal of violence, sex – or, sadly, both. The crimes that aren’t grisly or sordid tend to be utterly irrelevant to middle schoolers’ lives. Tax fraud? Not exactly fascinating to sixth graders – or, for that matter, adults.

So what’s a middle grade mystery author to do, if she or he wants to keep it contemporary and incorporate crime at the heart of the mystery? Here are some of the approaches I’ve noticed:

-- Make the stakes feel high to the main character, regardless of the crime’s magnitude

Getting to the bottom of who stole a trophy doesn’t seem like a high stakes endeavor. But Ben H. Winters makes it one in THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING EVERYTHING. It just so happens that the stolen trophy in question is the only one ever won in Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School’s history – and the principal has cancelled all fun until the trophy is back. Young Bethesda Fielding must get to the bottom of it all if school life isn’t going to be miserable. The stakes might feel low to adults, but it’s certainly not for the students at Mary Todd Lincoln.

-- Spotlight the effect of the investigations on the characters rather than the nature of the crime.

Both my mystery THE WIG IN THE WINDOW and its sequel, THE TIARA ON THE TERRACE, which I’m working on now, have very dangerous potential villains and the crimes are high stakes. To keep things from getting too crazy, I keep those possible crimes firmly off-screen/in the backstory. My focus is on the investigations (or, in the case of WIG, the cat-and-mouse game with the potentially dangerous school counselor) and how they affect Young & Yang’s friendship. For me, mysteries are a wonderful way of exploring the self-doubt and friendship tensions that middle schoolers deal with so regularly. While the dangerous potential back story fuels the plot, my young sleuths' relationship is at the forefront.

--Choose a high-stakes crime that doesn’t involve violence

A straightforward route. Art theft or fraud is a non-violent yet exciting choice. Elise Broach created a lovely, elaborate mystery around this in  MASTERPIECE. And who can forget Michelangelo at the heart of The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler?  Crimes against the environment or involving animals also resonate with middle schoolers without involving violence. Carl Hiassen’s books for middle graders are wonderful examples of very thrilling, high stakes stories about issues that kids care about. Chris Grabenstein’s latest, Riley Mack and the Other Known Troublemakers, also pulls this off well. He focuses on a gambling bank manager who frames the main character’s mom as well as a dog-knapping and puppy mill ring. While the gambling bank manager isn’t interesting to kids per se, it sure becomes so when our protagonist’s mom is involved.

These are just a few observations, of course. Can you think of other approaches middle grade authors take when incorporating crime into their mysteries?


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Kristen Kittscher’s debut middle grade mystery THE WIG IN THE WINDOW (Harper Children’s) will be released in  2013. It follows the comic misadventures of two tween sleuths who suspect their school counselor is a dangerous fugitive — and just might be right! A former middle school English teacher, Kristen lives in Pasadena, California with her husband, Kai. When she’s not hard at work on the sequel to wig, THE TIARA ON THE TERRACE, you’ll find her running her after-school tutoring business or taking orders from her hopelessly spoiled pets. 

Guilty as Charged

Welcome to "Case Files From Our Detectives." Every Tuesday, in rotation, we blog on a topic relevant to the craft of mystery writing. If you're a new follower or just discovering us now, you can check out past Case Files in the archives; they're all listed in the upper right sidebar.

Today we're launching our sixth Tuesday topic, which is an essential part of mystery writing: CRIME. For the next seven weeks, we'll explore the following questions and more: What are some of the challenges we face in writing about crimes and criminals in mysteries for young people? What are some of the most compelling crimes and who are the most dastardly criminals in books that we've read? What are some real-life crimes that capture our imagination as writers? How does one craft a complex villain in fiction for kids? What happens when young people are criminals in mysteries? What kind of victims populate kids' mysteries? How do we research criminal or investigative procedures? How does the law affect young people in life and in fiction? And -- as alternative window on the topic -- what are some "writing crimes" we are sometimes guilty of?
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I'll kick off our theme today with a confession.

When I started writing Tokyo Heist, I knew very little about investigative procedures. Or about the law in general. I'd had no experience with police stations or courts -- I was routinely passed over for jury duty and never even had a traffic ticket. I had no useful relatives working in law enforcement. On the fictional front, I hadn't read much crime fiction, nor did I watch crime drama on TV. I was totally out of my league. Was I even qualified to write a story about an art heist? I hesitated to go on.

But the story beckoned to me. I kept writing. Then, around page 100, I hit a dead end.

I faced a firing squad of countless unanswered questions. For example: What kind of alarm would have gone off -- or not gone off -- in someone's house? If it didn't go off, why not? How long would police take to respond to a call? What would happen after that? What branch of the police would investigate a high-profile art heist? When would detectives turn it over to another agency?

By midorisyu from Japan (Ueno park police01) via Wikimedia Commons

More problems loomed. I was taking my story to Japan. How did law enforcement work in that country?
What level of detectives would my characters be dealing with? Would police or agents there work with American detectives, or independently? Which country's laws is the criminal bound to when international borders are crossed? What was the statute of limitations for stolen art there?

For awhile, I was a fugitive, on the run from my manuscript and its legal problems. But I finally faced my ignorance and surrendered. I started researching, tackling just one question at a time.

Some information, like about basic police procedures after a break-in, was readily found online. (Careful -- procedures can vary by city or state). Other information was not so easily found. For the tricky questions, I emailed or called experts, who were happy to help me; some even let me run my plot points or scenes by them later, and they evaluated them for plausibility. Sources I consulted included:

• The president of a home security company
• A police chief
• The FBI (they have a media outreach department and apparently are used to dealing with questions from novelists and screenwriters)
• Lawyers
• Security guards
• Japanese residents familiar with legal procedures in that country

Once I had answers, my story began to take off again. I avoided dead ends I'd been heading toward. Now that I was armed with new knowledge, even more plot ideas came to me, as well as new characters -- including quite a few law enforcement officials and detectives who had been strangely missing from the manuscript (off on a coffee and doughnut break, I guess).

The facts of the law, and more people to uphold it, instantly put more narrative pressure on the story. They added time pressure and tension. Sometimes they presented roadblocks, when a plot development I desired would not be legally possible. But then, quite often, I'd find some new way around that roadblock, and a plot twist would result.

In my earliest draft attempts, did I think I was somehow above the law? That I didn't need to know much about it in order to get through a draft? Yes. Guilty as charged.

Now I try to learn all I can about the law, police, and investigative procedures. I try to get to know the friendly law enforcement officers in my neighborhood. I pay more attention to lawyers, detectives, FBI agents and law officers whenever I see them on TV, whether on the news or in dramas. And I try to formulate my research questions and line up potential sources very early in a draft. Learning about the law, and laying down the law in my mysteries, springs me from the prison of indecision and frees me up to write.

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Diana was born in Seattle and now lives outside of Boston with her husband and son. TOKYO HEIST (Viking/Penguin, coming June 14, 2012) is her first novel.