Party: A Mystery

This must surely be a first: a Phinney by Post selection has been adapted into a children's picture book. In this case, it was one of the New Yorker Talk of the Town vignettes in Jamaica Kincaid's Talk Stories, an account of a publicity event for the Nancy Drew books told, in a droll deadpan, in fully Nancy Drew style, which illustrator Cortes thought—correctly, it turns out—could be turned into a charming, if oblique, illustrated tale of three girls discovering a mystery at a fancy reception, in which the true story is the frustration of the youngest girl at being, once again, left out of the know. (Ages 2 to 5, as well as older Nancy Drew or Jamaica Kincaid fans)