Benny on the Case

4.3

0.0 (0)

261 0

Write Review Add to favorites

Author(s)

Wesley King

Publisher

Beach lane Books

Genre(s)

Age Range

Release Date

April 15, 2025

ISBN

978-1665937696

Buy This Book

A boy with Mosaic Down syndrome navigates entering a mainstream classroom, making new friends, and standing up to bullies all while trying to catch a thief and save his home in this “suspenseful, emotional” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) middle grade mystery from New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Wesley King.

Benny isn’t your average boy from Newfoundland. He lives in a retirement home that his mother runs, he has an eighty-six-year-old best friend named Mr. Tom, he knows more about fixing boats than video games, and he has Mosaic Down syndrome. When Benny transitions to a mainstream classroom for the first time, the other students tease him for his differences…except for Salma. She’s new, too, and not your typical Newfoundland girl: she’s tech savvy, speaks Arabic, plays basketball, and isn’t afraid to eat lunch with Benny.

So when Salma’s grandmother and several other residents in the retirement home are robbed, Benny asks Salma to help him catch the thief. Time is not on their side as an inspector threatens to close the home. And to make matters worse, Benny and Salma must crack the case while working on a class assignment with their bullies. Can Benny save his home and take a stand against the bullies once and for all? He’s about to find out, b’ys.

Editor review

1 review

Have you ever been to Newfoundland?

April 07, 2025 (Updated: June 23, 2026)

Overall rating

4.3

Plot

4.0

Characters

4.0

Writing Style

5.0

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

N/A

Benny is an eleven-year-old who lives in St. George's Bay, Newfoundland, where his mother runs the Starflower by the Sea retirement home. He's been in special education his whole life, since he has Mosaic Down Syndrome. This means that while he has the physical features similar to others with this genetic condition, he doesn't have the health problems or cognitive delays. His teacher, Mr. Keane, has decided that it's time for Benny to be "reintegrated"; what we would term "mainstreamed" in the US. The day that he is to start, there is a lot happening; a nursing home resident has jewelry stolen, and one of the resident's granddaughter's, Salma, has moved from Seattle and is also starting school. The kids in their class aren't too well versed in dealing with others who might be different, and Mark and Ashlin are especially mean to the two, who become friends. Salma, whose father is from Tunisia, stands out in the primarily white Newfoundland community, and Benny is often treated like he is very young; Mark calls him "slow". When the fate of the Starflower, and of his best friend, 86 year old Mr. Tom, hinges on solving the mystery of the rash of thefts and a complicated scam involving retirement homes in the area (in which Ashlin's father is a major player), Benny and Salma step up to investigate. Benny's mother is struggling to keep the home open, especially since she is running it alone after the death of Benny's father four years previously, and Mr. Tom's health is rapidly failing. Will Benny and Salma be able to figure out the threats to the Starflower before it's too late?

Good Points

This started with a description of "Newfoundlander speak" which was rather charming, and Benny had a great voice. I was instantly drawn into the story because of the feeling of community and wanted to know more about daily life there. The idea of a small, family run retirement home is intriguing, and I can't imagine how difficult a place like that would be to run. Mr. Tom and the other residents are not as key to the plot as they are to stories like Forman's Not Nothing or Van Draanen's The Secret Life of Lincoln Jones, but I still love to see tweens interact with older people, even if this leads to sad endings. The combination of the elements made for an interesting in unique story that I really enjoyed.

While I loved that the mystery was deeper than just items going missing from the residents, I wonder how lucrative it would be to take over retirement homes in Newfoundland. It really wasn't necessary to kill off the father. I would love to see another book set in this location with a lot more details about what life is like in Newfoundland, maybe involving smash ball, a sort of soccer with bodychecking!

Usually, the only characters in middle grade stories with Down Syndrome are siblings (Charlie in Cochrane's Breaking into Sunlight, Sarah in Oppel's Inkling, Izzie in Choldenko's One-Third Nerd, Charlie in Cartaya's Marcus Vega Doesn't Speak Spanish, Squirrel, in Hart's Daisy Wormwood Changes the World, Benny and Tessie in Dallas' Somewhere to Call Home), although Darby in Cotterill's A Storm of Strawberries is a main character. It's quite interesting to see a main character with this condition, and to get information about Benny's particular type, but it was the Newfoundland setting and the mysteries at the Starflower that really sold this one to me. Mystery lovers will applaud Salma and Benny's investigative skills while marveling at a school without a basketball hoop!