Books I Have Taught: Holiday Puzzle

The Books I Have Taught series is a personal reflection on the books I have taught in my classes. Their experiences often reveal interesting truths, not about the themes necessarily, but more about the outcomes and interactions I had with my students and the various paths it led me down. I hope you enjoy my reflection on the books that I have taught.

Welcome to the last book I have taught, for the moment anyway. This last one is unique because unlike all other texts on the list, this is not a classic or even well-known. Holiday Puzzle by Mosomoso (link to text at the bottom) is a locked door mystery that I found for my students. I will begin with the teaching component, which this story is a benefit to. The story is split into three sections, the first is the build-up, the second is the mystery and the final is the solution. I used just the last two sections, starting with the mystery and having my students highlight the key pieces of evidence and then attempt to solve it. Once they had come up with a theory I would give them the solution. For a teaching activity I thought it was engaging, as the students were not simply reading, but they were solving a mystery and the act of highlighting is also an effective reading tool for students to make use of to help with both engagement and comprehension of a text. What I noticed, which was consistent with all of my students, is that none of them had a correct theory. All of them were wrong and only one came vaguely close. This upset many of my students, not because they were wrong, I mean some were definitely upset for that reason, but it was because they felt the clues that the author laid made it impossible for the mystery to be solved without the solution being read to them. They are correct, there is no way that a reader could reasonably solve this mystery unless they knew what happened or guessed and it made me consider a problem within the mystery genre. Should the audience be able to work out the mystery before the author officially reveals the solution? Some might argue that there is no joy in knowing what will happen well before the story ends and I would agree, part of the intrigue of the genre is not knowing and trying to work it out, but there should be a balance, where the reader is rewarded for paying attention. What is the point of leaving clues for the audience if it is not reasonable for them to solve it? Because the opposite of the audience discovering the solution well before it is revealed is them being told the solution and releasing, they could have never figured it out. It leaves a bad final impression of the text, as Holiday Puzzle did with my students. It feels like we have been lied to, like being given a puzzle to solve that is unsolvable just to watch us squirm and fail so the creator can look down on us. I am not accusing the author here of malice, but that is how I and my students felt, though that does not mean that the text should not be taught. I would still highly recommend it, not only because the three parts are really useful to pace the students but the complaints that my students had shows that they were engaged and it meant for their own assessment, which was the creation of their own locked door mystery, they would make sure it could be solved.

In my own writing, I find myself reflecting on two things. The first is the reward I am giving my audience for investing in my work. What do they get? A good story? Hopefully. A compelling ending? Ideally. I want to make sure the audience is rewarded for their time because that is the real trade for my work, yes there is money, but money is earnt, but time is given. It is also far more valuable and as a writer who is asking the audience for their time, I need to respect that. The second is how I would react if someone wrote a piece about my work in a similar vain to what I have done to the one who identified by the name Mosomoso. Would I be happy that someone is using my work? Would I focus on the negatives? Try to spin positives? I don’t wish to disregard the effort that this author put into their work and I understand that my own pieces are not above reproach, I just reflect. Criticism is unavoidable and while part of me knows that I need to just accept it, I also know that my heart is in my work. I care what the audience thinks because I want them to like it, but that is still something I am navigating. For the moment though, if I find myself being critical of another, I have to remember that I have every right to, but that I want to be careful, remembering that it is someone’s heart I am cutting into.

This is the end of my Books I Have Taught Series, I may continue it, if I have the opportunity to teach more texts, but for now this is it. I hope you enjoyed it and return next week for the beginning of a new series. Also, feel free to read Holiday Puzzle with the link below and see if you agree with what my students and I felt about it.

HOLIDAY PUZZLE: A LOCKED ROOM MYSTERY | WITH A TWIST