Kid Sherlock returns in ‘Vanished!’
For an encore to an auspicious debut, 12-year-old Florian Bates visits the White House twice, befriends the president and tracks a missing childprodigy cellist.
Not bad for a consulting detective to the FBI who has been compared to Sherlock Holmes. The latest adventures of Florian, the creation of Maitland author James Ponti, propel the novel “Vanished!”
When the book is released Tuesday, Ponti will visit six schools in Winter Park and Maitland.
Ponti’s rapport for young readers comes through in the books. “Elementary school is this protective, wonderful place. High school, everyone is going on a different track,” he said. “Middle school is the intersection. Kids get lost in there. I think kids doubt their self-worth in there. I think that identity matters a lot in middle school. I want to write for those kids.”
The first Florian book — “Framed! — was published last August, and Ponti was nominated for the prestigious Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. It’s on this year's Sunshine State Young Readers Award list for both third-tofifth grades as well as sixthto-eighth.
“All these things are nice as I try to move up into books that are bigger and better received,” said Ponti, 51, who works at Golf Channel.
In book two, Florian and best pal Margaret go undercover at the prep school where the president’s daughter is a student. The two kid detectives try to find out who’s pulling pranks close to the first daughter.
Readers become acquainted with Florian as he narrates. He describes his everyday struggles and explains his method TOAST — Theory of All Small Things — to read people and solve mysteries.
“He’s still a seventhgrader. He battles bullies. He has homework issues,” Ponti said. “Sherlock had it easy. He didn’t have to deal with all that stuff.”
Ponti has attributed his talent for writing child characters to his wife, Denise, a teacher at Winter Park High School, and son Grayson, 22, a college graduate who writes the Zoophoria blog. “Framed!” was dedicated to Alex, the Pontis’ severely autistic son who died at 22 in 2015.
The author draws inspiration from young readers.
“At middle school, everyone feels different from everyone else, and they don’t want to,” he said. “So I try to write books that celebrate being different. When you get older, you realize being different is better.”
Ponti has turned in the first draft for a third Florian book called “Trapped!”
Florian continues to deal with a secret about Margaret: He knows her birth father is a gangster, but has promised the mobster not to tell her for her protection.
“I don’t like it when stories are too easy for characters,” Ponti said. “Florian really wrestles with that through the first three books. Here’s the person who is my best friend ever. I know the one thing she wants to know more than anything, and I don’t tell her. Does that make me a bad friend, a bad person?”
Ponti answers his own question: Florian is “a good, kind-hearted kid who is spying on people.”