A new student named Octavius Bloom is a Pinkerton detective and decides to solve the mystery surrounding the house that his classmates fear. He listens to the students’ accounts and does research then takes them to the house show them what is truly there.

Octavius Bloom and the House of Doom by Erik Brooks includes themes of being a new student as well as being fearful of the unknown. Octavius demonstrates that by exploring the unknown, in this case Priscilla O’Moore’s yard, and researching he and others can gain knowledge and conquer their fears. This narrative poem is structured in rhyming couplets. The number of couplets to each stanza is uneven, however, probably to have certain subjects be with certain illustrations. There could have been more conflict in the story. Priscilla O’Moore could have been angry to find Bloom in her shed during the climactic scene, for example. The illustrations in the story are fun and imaginative and use vivid colors and shadows well. They show a lot of information that isn’t in the text itself. Overall, this story is a fun mystery that is published by Albert Whitman & Company.