Win 1 of 5: The Complete Bestie Knows Collection

Quit ten activity books by page ten? This one isn’t a workbook. It’s a mystery, and every chapter ends on a cliffhanger.

Bestie Knows is a four-book detective series for kids 9 to 13, and each book investigates one ridiculous question about the human body — Can You Tickle Yourself?, Can You Remember Your Dreams?, Why Are Farts Soooo Loud?, and Why Do I Smell Funky? The science is real neuroscience. Getting to it is not easy. Each book hides 29 clues locked behind Caesar, Atbash and Substitution ciphers plus word scrambles, searches, mazes and acrostics, and every clue a kid cracks goes onto one line of a Master Case File at the back. Fill all 29 and the whole story finally lands.

Here’s the part parents like: a kid can crack it alone, race a sibling through it, or the family can tear the chapters apart, split the work, and meet at the back for the answer key. It’s a Friday night that isn’t a screen. Each book comes with six collectible Brain Sleuth cards and a Decoder Toolbox cheat sheet, and the answer lines are built to work for lefties as well as righties — a small thing that matters to about one kid in ten. No batteries, no app, no login. Written by Yv Anela, the pen name of a New Jersey father who builds these in the evenings after his day job; the name is his own initials woven together with his two daughters’.