The Nina, the Pinta, and the Vanishing Treasure

The Nina, the Pinta, and the Vanishing Treasure is a mystery for younger readers by Jill Santopolo, published in 2008 and the first book about Alec Flint, a fourth-grade detective in training.

The Christopher Columbus exhibit vanishes from the local museum, along with whatever the thieves thought was worth taking. Alec Flint takes on the case and works the way a fourth-grader has to: asking adults questions they would rather not answer, keeping notes, and following leads that are sometimes promising and sometimes merely strange. He is joined by Gina, a new classmate with a problem of her own, because one of the teachers at their school has disappeared and nobody seems to be treating it as urgent. The two of them work out how the museum theft and the missing teacher connect, and the trail carries them further from the classroom than either of them expected.

Santopolo writes the series for readers moving from picture books into chapter books, and its puzzles are built on real historical material as well as on clues a child could plausibly investigate.