By Allison Lee (age 10)
Sherlock Holmes is a great series for kids as well as adults. It includes lots of action and funny scenes, and while there is some violence they aren’t really inappropriate.
I really enjoyed them because it was fun to see how Sherlock Holmes instantly knew many things about people just from seeing their clothes and physical characteristics. I think that can be kind of funny at times because he just does it so quickly, and also because Conan Doyle includes the reactions of others witnessing Holmes’ deductions, which I think are pretty funny.
Another reason why I think kids should read the Sherlock Holmes stories is because it’s fun to try to solve the case with Holmes and compare your thoughts to his. Like how Holmes said that he studied a thousand cases, maybe if you read the stories enough you can eventually come to the same conclusions as him if you haven’t already.
A few Sherlock Holmes stories also include action scenes or just clever tricks which usually involve Holmes and sometimes even Watson using disguises to outwit his enemies. His disguises often can even fool the people working with him, and it’s also funny to see their reactions to realizing it was actually him. They also sometimes can fool you and it’s cool to see how everything plays out into Holmes solving the case.
I started reading Sherlock Holmes with the first story, a Study in Scarlet, but there are multiple books kids can start with. There are actually two types of Sherlock Holmes stories, novels, which include chapters and are much longer than others, and the short stories, which are shorter and less detailed.
A Study in Scarlet, (which the name A Study in Sherlock is based off of) is a good first story as well as the actual first story in the whole series. It’s the first, introductory story, so in general it would be great to start with. It doesn’t have as much action as others, and it’s a novel, so it’s a bit slow, and I think it’s not really the most exciting. Even though, it includes most of the background information if you’re not familiar with the general theme. My dad recommends that if you start with this story, you could probably skip the second part (the part from the bad guy’s perspective) since it is “boring and irrelevant to the plot”. Otherwise it’s a pretty good story to start with.
The Red-Headed League is also a good story to start with even though it’s not the first chronologically, since the crime and the way Holmes catches the criminals are pretty clever. It’s pretty actiony and it teaches a bunch of good lessons. It’s a short story, but it still introduces the concept pretty well and I think it’s pretty good to start with. (Also it is not violent.) My dad recommends this story because it is “the perfect Sherlock Holmes story.” It’s probably not perfect, but I still like it a lot and you could definitely start with this.
The Baker Street Irregulars books are also great to start with. They probably don’t introduce Holmes as well since it’s not from Watson’s point of view like the others, but they were written with kids in mind unlike the others and are also from the point of view of kids. If you don’t know who they are, the Baker Street Irregulars are basically a bunch of kids who work for Holmes. According to him, they are the “Baker Street division of the police force”. They go around gathering information for him and helping him do active work. The books are a spin-off series that have three books with the last one based on an original Sherlock Holmes story, the Final Problem. The other two are made-up crimes but still have lots of action and are pretty hard to solve. They aren’t as non-violent as others but have no deaths. Overall, they aren’t original to the series but still pretty good to start with.
Study in Sherlock: A Holmes Re-Read 