Every girl needs to go through a Nancy Drew phase at least once. For me, that was when I was in 6th grade and read...I don't even know how many of these books. At least eight, I think. This one sticks out in my mind the most because over the course of her ski-related escapades, Nancy taught me something that I still consider really important: how to signal an SOS with a flashlight after you've managed to escape the abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods where The Bad Guys tied you up and left you for dead. The books are full of her doing awesome stuff like that, by the way. In one book, she gets tied up on an airplane and reaches back into her pocket for her lipstick, which she then uses to write a backwards SOS on the window of the plane (and then closes the blind so the people inside can't see it) In another one, she and her friend Bess get tied up (Nancy spends about 50% of her mystery-solving time getting tied up and stowed away somewhere) and left in a toy warehouse, so they use a scrap of metal to cut the ropes, and then find a chemistry set and use it to make fake smoke so the guys gaurding the door run into the warehouse and then Nancy and her friend get away. When you're twelve years old, that sounds pretty awesome.
The Mystery at the Ski Jump is a children's story by Carolyn Keene (pseudonym) and the 29th book in the Nancy Drew series. Nancy Drew's sleuthing finds her looking for an unscrupulous door-to-door fur saleswoman with counterparts whose trails take Nancy and her friends from New York to Canada.I’ve always been a voracious reader. So, as a child, one of my favorite things about summer was the frequent trips to our local library, which was less than a mile from our house. Like most young girls of a certain age (ahem), my love for mysteries started with Nancy Drew—there simply was no mystery too baffling that she couldn’t solve. And as I would read her most current adventure, I would imagine myself following in her footsteps … taking charge and plunging ahead, getting into mischief, chasing down culprits and solving the mystery. Even though I haven’t re-read any of these books since I was a child, I still think that Nancy is a great character—her courage, confidence and fierce independence, makes her an iconic source of inspiration for young girls everywhere. A must-read children's book, The Mystery at the Ski Jump is another wonderful Nancy Drew mystery.
What do You think about Mystery At The Ski Jump (1968)?
I remember the first time I read Nancy Drew. It blew my mind that there were girls presented with a brain. Most of the stuff I'd read up to that time, was that girls were sugar and spice - fluffy. No brains. To also learn about George who is a tomboy was a nice validation. Carolyn Keene wrote just for me! That is how I felt. When I did more research, I was shocked to find out, Ms. Keene was actually a man ... writing under Franklin Dixon. I also loved the Hardy Boys. No wonder I loved these series.Great for girls aged 8 and up.
—♆ BookAddict ✒ La Crimson Femme
I saw the library added a ton of Nancy Drew e-books, and with the Winter Olympics happening, what better flashback to childhood than the Mystery of the Ski Jump? First of all, it wasn't about a ski jump at all. That was like two pages of the whole book. Second, it's so interesting to read a book like this written in the...past. I almost thought about classifying it as historical fiction! I would be so interested to talk to a current pre-teen reading these older versions of Nancy Drew. It probably wouldn't be easy to read quickly with the dated language. Third, Nancy is still annoying. She knows everything and can do everything. But she's also Just A Girl, so bad things have to happen to her. For instance, early in the book, Nancy reminisces about winning a random slalom ski race. But later on, she hangs out with a ski instructor and demurs that she's not that great at skiing, and she does end up falling on a mogul. In some other scenes, she does a waltz and then the next day, subs in to a skating competition somehow because she could do the waltz on skates (?!). But near the end--she gets overtaken by the baddies and is kidnapped and almost dies!
—Julie
The captcha on this book is full of weird errors, more than most of the other books. And Nancy is a decent ice skater but not really impressive on skis, even though she won a novice slaloming competition a year before the book takes place.A phony stock scheme, like book 23 and 25. If you read these sequentially, the tropes recycle way too quick. Also Nancy's identity is stolen like in book 4. And of course, she's kidnapped and bound and gagged again when the people she's with turn their backs for two minutes.She gets stunned falling on a ski slope but it's not clear if she actually loses consciousness, and she lapses into hypothermic semi-consciousness near the end.
—Melanie
