Grade schoolers are going to enjoy this story; it's a good one! Lots of fun mysteries to solve and great characters. I think lots of kids will relate to Stephen. Good, easy, read.

Stephen Noble isn't your run of the mill kid. He can get somewhat on edge, and he replays occasions in his mind over and over. He additionally things a ton about what may happen. Furthermore, he is venturing up his duties in helping his dad's business, Noble Dog Walking. He additionally appears to become friends with Renee at school, in the wake of getting combined up in school. Be that as it may, weird things begin happening, somebody runs an auto into the school working, there is a bomb danger. Also, life for Stephen gets a whole lot more entangled. For soon two of Stephen's most loved puppies are dognapped and he is being undermined and extorted.

Renee needs Stephen to go to go to the police to clear he huge sibling. Be that as it may, he fears for the pooches wellbeing. Together they think of an arrangement to attempt and save the canines regardless of whether it implies offering in to extort.

The book is composed in an exceptionally fascinating manner. Stephen checks his days by what number of slip-ups he makes. So the sections are Day One Mistake One, Day One Mistake Two … to Day Three Mistake Ten.

As somebody who grew up with a learning handicap, and invested a great deal of energy with different understudies with unique needs this book was a captivating perused. It truly catches kinship, and figuring out how to live with your disparities. It additionally has a solid message about transforming your disparities into qualities. It is likewise about dependability, steadfastness amongst Stephen and Renee and furthermore with the mutts Ping and Pong.

I adored this book enormously and truly anticipate perusing the following in the arrangement when it winds up plainly accessible. The characters and charming, the story is immersing. I trust we get numerous more experiences with Stephen and Renee. I additionally anticipate perusing this book with my youngsters which is the most noteworthy applaud I can give. Well done Sylvia, thank you for an incredible read.

ARC for review - EPD - January 17, 2017.

It's been a while since I read this one, but I remember it was a fair-to-middling elementary age mystery where the protagonist has OCD and a bit of an anxiety problem, so it will likely appeal to kids with those issues. No great mystery here - the main character is the key.

This is a great little mystery featuring quirky kids who are less frequently portrayed as heroes of their own stories.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley/the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Best Mistake Mystery is a middle grade novel written by Sylvia McNicoll. Stephen Nobel doesn’t really fit in with the other kids at school, especially after his best friend moved away last year. Stephen tends to hyperfocus on his mistakes, but he takes pleasure in helping his father with the family dog walking business.

Stephen also has an eye for details, and this comes in handy when a series of strange events happen, one after the other. There’s a bomb threat at Stephen’s school, and then someone drives a car into the wall of the gymnasium! Stephen is intrigued by this, and he wonders if there’s a connection. His classmate Renee keeps turning up; at first Stephen is annoyed by her, but as he gets to know her, he just may have discovered a friend and ally. Stephen and Renee need to work together to solve these mysteries, especially since Renee’s brother has been implicated!

I almost always read the middle grade novels I receive with my three daughters, who are in the fourth and second grades at school. They really enjoyed reading The Best Mistake Mystery. They thought it was a very funny book, and they especially enjoyed the antics of the two dogs that Stephen takes care of. They also liked the way that Stephen measured his days by the number of mistakes that he made.

I would recommend The Best Mistake Mystery to middle grade readers. This was a satisfying mystery, and we did not guess the outcome before the big reveal. Stephen has a kind heart and good intentions, so it was very rewarding to see his friendship with Renee develop over the course of the story. This appears to be the first entry in a series of mystery novels. My girls are already excited to read more of Stephen and Renee’s adventures!

This lovely mystery book is a gem for children and adults alike – for anyone who likes a good mystery with no sex and no violence, but lots of red herrings and twists.
Stephen has a lot of anxiety in his life: worrying about school, his (lack of) friends, his incipient dog-walking skills and the attendant dogs, his parents, and the many mistakes that he and those around him make each day. His mother adds to his anxiety by regaling Stephen with sanitised versions of “Snakes on a Plane” to describe her work days. The kittens and dogs may be cuter than snakes, but the potential danger to his mother and the airplane passengers is just as concerning for a young boy with a vivid imagination.
Stephen copes by enumerating mistakes. This is done in a straightforward manner, without malice and without blame – just some regret that the mistake has happened, and a hope that things will turn out right after all.
His best and only friend, Jessie, has moved away, but soon he is flung together with the know-it-all, annoying and ever-curious Renee – or “Princess Einstein” as he labels her. Against his better judgement, he lets her help him dog-walking the obstreperous, mismatched dogs, Ping and Pong. Almost immediately they are in the middle of a mystery involving a possible bomb threat at the school, a crashed car, and dodgy goings-on with the school staff. To make matters worse, Ping and ong are put in danger. Dog-nappers demand payment for Pong’s return and threaten worse should Stephen and Renee tell anyone what they have seen. The trouble is, they are not sure what they have seen, but are determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, save Pong, and clear up all the dog hairs at home before Stephen’s allergy prone mother gets back from her work.
As with all good mysteries, there are many suspects – adults and children alike – and many mistakes (all listed) are made before the final act. Stephen has seen enough TV to know what he shouldn’t do: “If I were watching some mystery movie right now and the twelve-year-old kids decided to wait till their parents were asleep to sneak out in the middle of the night, I’d know it was a mistake. That something awful would happen”. But that doesn’t stop him and Renee: “Mistake number eight today is not listening to that voice”.
The writing is very good with evocative descriptions. For example, the teacher Mrs Worsley startled by the fire alarm: “Her woolly eyebrows knit and her mouth purls”. Stephen and Renee make a wonderful, loveable team of amateur sleuths, and their town is peopled by many well drawn subsidiary characters.
I can highly recommend this book, and hope there are more like this to come.

This was such a fun read with quirky little characters. I know my daughter will love this book in a couple of years.

I adored this book! It was sweet and funny and any time dogs are involved, sign me up! The cover is what piqued my interest. I love that the main character has a little bit of an anxiety problem. I think that lots of kids that age struggle with this issue so it is nice to see anxiety in a middle grade book. I recommend this for middle schoolers and dog lovers.

Anyone who’s read Anne of Green Gables (or watched the movie) knows the words Miss Stacy says to Anne when she messes up yet again: “Tomorrow is always fresh with no mistakes in it...well with no mistakes in it yet.” It’s a similar perspective to Stephen Nobel, dog walker and elementary school student but much more hopeful. Instead of starting a new day feeling like he can put the mistakes of yesterday behind him, Stephen wonders what he’ll do wrong today. He counts each mistake he makes, from letting Renée walk one of his two dogs, Ping and Pong, to thinking the fire drill is for real… and responding not-so-appropriately.

When somebody drives a car into the school, classmate Renée asks him to help her get her brother off the hook and someone else starts threatening Stephen to NOT tell what he knows (he knows nothing). Stephen begins to think he should try to figure it out if only to save Ping and Pong! He continues to make mistakes, but sometimes mistakes can lead to good things…

Stephen is a sweet, kind of vague boy. He’s just started his first solo job walking dogs (his dad’s business is Nobel Dog Walking) and is grudgingly letting Renée in as a friend. Renée is an annoying know-it-all who really spearheads the investigating. Stephen’s not interested in snooping but she won’t accept his no. Renée knows a lot of things, but Stephen is the observant one. So she drags him along. Ping and Pong, Stephen’s dogs for the week, add a lot of light-hearted fun to the gentle adventure. Definitely recommend this one.

A teenage dogwalker becomes the target of a threat after mysterious events at his school. He’ll have to figure out who’s sending him threatening texts and also how to help his classmate if he wants his routine to return to normal. Author Sylvia McNicoll gives middle grade readers a straightforward mystery in the fairly likeable novel The Best Mistake Mystery.

Seventh grader Stephen Nobel misses his best friend, but after Jessie moves away during the summer Stephen knows he has to navigate the new school year alone. His trick of counting his mistakes during the day helps but only a little. His nerdy classmate, Renee, decides they’re friends now, but Stephen does his best to avoid her.

Avoiding Renee becomes next to impossible, however, when the fire alarm goes off at school. She stays close to Stephen as they all file out, and soon enough Stephen figures out the alarm wasn’t a drill. Things start to get really tricky when a bomb squad shows up at the school and “detonates” a backpack, which means school gets out for the day. Because Renee doesn’t want to go home alone, she tags along.

Stephen takes the opportunity to walk his new canine clients, Ping and Pong, but the news from school only becomes more complicated in the days that follow. Someone drives a car into the school, and the principal’s wedding dress gets stolen.

The problems become personal when Renee reveals that the police have begun to investigate her brother as a person of interest in the incident at the school with the car. Then someone dognaps one of Stephen’s clients. He’ll have to rely on Renee and his own wits in order to figure out what’s happening before something else bad happens.

Author Sylvia McNicoll creates a fairly relatable character in Stephen. He deals with many of the same issues that today’s middle schoolers tackle, and target readers will identify with Stephen. McNicoll also creates awareness of social anxiety in a subtle way, introducing it in an accessible way to readers unfamiliar with concept.

Less subtle is the way McNicoll presents the mystery itself. Despite the attempts at misdirection and inserting red herrings, the mystery unfolds in a fairly obvious manner. Readers who enjoy the enigmatic progression of a good mystery may find this book a little lacking. The novel is more suited for reluctant readers who might need a little encouragement to get through a book. The easy clues will help them enjoy the payoff of a good mystery.

I recommend readers Borrow The Best Mistake Mystery.

Anxious Stephen Nobel has a habit of overanalyzing things. When the bomb squad searches his school and a car crashes into the building, Stephen can’t leave it alone. But now his new friend Renée and his furry clients Ping and Pong are wrapped up in a dangerous mystery with a real criminal!

The book is written in a very interesting way. Stephen counts his days by how many mistakes he makes. So the chapters are Day One Mistake One, Day One Mistake Two … to Day Three Mistake Ten. A quick and enjoyable read.

While it is hard sometimes not to judge a book with adult eyes, I believe my middle school students will enjoy this mystery featuring an anxious eleven-year-old.

This is a sweet, lively, fun middle grade mystery that I think reading-ahead-of-their-age third graders as well as fourth through sixth graders would enjoy.

It's written first person present tense, an unusual voice to be found in middle grade, but I think it works for this book, which features Stephen, an anxious seventh grade boy (adult readers will recognize a bit of OCD and definitely social anxiety) whose best friend recently moved away.

Stephen's dad also quit his job as an air traffic controller and now is a dog walker, and a knitter during his free time, while Stephen's mom is part of an airline crew, and so we get to know her through phone calls. She always has a funny story for Stephen about animals on planes, and though Stephen is always ready to clap his hands over his ears in case it has a bad ending, his mom never betrays him.

Meanwhile, Stephen is having a tough time with his first clients, the Bennet family's rescue greyhound and tiny pom, who don't especially get along, and who are badly trained. Meanwhile, Stephen keeps noticing an odd Volkswagen Beetle being driven oddly around the neighborhood. A very observant boy who counts up his daily mistakes, he soon sees that there is a mystery centering on that Volkswagen being crashed into his school in the middle of the night!

Stephen slowly makes a new friend, a girl named Renee who he wrote off at first as a showoff, but the two form a friendship as they try to solve the mystery.

Nothing really bad happens to anyone, there is plenty of action and some great laughs, and though Stephen counts his mistakes, there's nothing here to give young readers nightmares. It's a fun opening to a series that I think boys and girls would thoroughly enjoy--and adults would enjoy reading aloud to them.

This book was an excellent read! In some ways it reads like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon but written for kids. The story is very well written and progresses as at great pace. The characters are amazing, the two main characters are Stephen Nobel and Renée Kobai.

Stephen Noble is not your typical kid. He can get a little anxious, and he replays events in his head again and again. He also things a lot about what might happen. And he is stepping up his responsibilities in helping his father’s business, Noble Dog Walking. He also seems to hit it off with Renee at school, after getting paired up in school. But strange things start happening, someone runs a car into the school building, there is a bomb threat. And life for Stephen gets much much more complicated. For soon two of Stephen’s favorite dogs are dognapped and he is being threatened and blackmailed.

Renee wants Stephen to go to go to the police to clear he big brother. But he fears for the dogs safety. Together they come up with a plan to try and rescue the dogs even if it means giving in to blackmail.

The book is written in a very interesting way. Stephen counts his days by how many mistakes he makes. So the chapters are Day One Mistake One, Day One Mistake Two … to Day Three Mistake Ten.

As someone who grew up with a learning disability, and spent a lot of time with other students with special needs this book was a fascinating read. It really captures friendship, and learning to live with your differences. It also has a strong message about turning your differences into strengths. It is also about loyalty, loyalty between Stephen and Renee and also with the dogs Ping and Pong.

I loved this book tremendously and really look forward to reading the next in the series when it becomes available. The characters and endearing, the story is engrossing. I hope we get many more adventures with Stephen and Renee. I also look forward to reading this book with my children which is the highest praise I can give. Well done Sylvia, thank you for a great read.