In the case of Sara Varon’s new middle-grade mystery series, the real mystery is how it came to be.

“I’m not a mysterious or sneaky person,” she tells Kirkus, “and I don’t usually read mysteries, which makes it even weirder that I wrote one.”

Varon is the Chicago-based author/illustrator of Robot Dreams (2007)—which became an Academy Award–nominated film by Pablo Berger—as well as Odd Duck (2013), New Shoes (2018), and many other books for young readers. The Case of the Golden Bone (First Second, May 28) is the first book in a planned trilogy featuring Detective Sweet Pea, a creative canine gumshoe based on Varon’s real-life dog.

“Once I decided to write one, I thought, Well, what kind of mystery would I write?” says Varon, who set out to research detectives of all stripes in literature and film. “Ultimately, I felt like my mystery would be more like the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, where it’s less about the mystery and more about somebody trying to help their friends get along.”

In The Case of the Golden Bone,the all-animal town of Parkville is rocked on the night of the dog choir’s season-opening concert when museum director Lilian discovers the disappearance of the Golden Chew Bone. Everyone—especially the canine community, which receives considerable oral health benefits from gnawing on the bone—hopes Sweet Pea’s superior sense of smell can help recover the famous artifact. “Sniffing around for an adorable, exciting, and thoughtful tale?” Kirkus writes in a starred review. “This doggy detective delivers.”

Varon recently spoke with us via Zoom. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us a little bit about Detective Sweet Pea and the mystery she’s attempting to solve in Book One.

Detective Sweet Pea is based on this Sweet Pea [she points to a wall-mounted photograph of her dog]. Sweet Pea solves mysteries with her nose. She likes to figure out what’s going on. In the book, she’s very kind and welcoming. The real Sweet Pea, while she’s kind to me, isn’t quite as kind and welcoming—but in the book she’s ready to meet new people, she likes to bring people together, she loves to smell, and she loves to eat garbage. A famous dog bone goes missing, and she has to figure out what happened.

When you’re writing a mystery, what are the main beats you have to hit?

I modeled Golden Bone after this [mystery] I read that was really great [The Real McCoys by Matthew Swanson, illustrated by Robbi Behr]. My agent and I talked about [the plot], and we broke it down into thirds: The first third is establishing what’s normal—the town, the people—and then something goes wrong. The second third is [the detective] trying to figure it out. The last third is her putting things right.

I know you’re not a mystery-geared person, but are you a Jessica Fletcher fan by any chance?

I love Murder, She Wrote. So I did watch a bunch of shows, including ones where people are jerks and there’s murder and no one’s really nice, but I tried to model Sweet Pea after Jessica Fletcher, who’s really kind. And the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, as I’ve said. I also watched a lot of the TV show Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, set in Australia in the 1920s.

Initially, since it’s a series—and this is my first series—I thought about how I could have stories in each book, then have an arc that runs across all three books. I watched [various] series for that. I watched Miss Fisher’s to learn how to introduce new subplots in subsequent stories, and have them build on what came before. I have to say, I feel like I haven’t really succeeded in doing that, but I did watch a lot of that particular series.

You’ve been making books ever since graduating from art school in 2002. Have you seen a lot of changes in the industry since then?

Completely. There were no major publishers doing comics when I started. I got in early; I was very lucky. I feel like at many points of my life, I’ve been very lucky and in the right place at the right time. I got in right at the beginning of the big publishing houses doing graphic novels. Now the skill level of the people making graphic novels is so much higher, light-years ahead of what it was. Back then, there wasn’t so much competition. Now everybody’s so good—the drawing skills, the computer skills, the coloring skills are great—and the variety [is amazing]. Raina Telgemeier changed so many things by making books for girls in middle school that were about middle school girls, and making them cool.

Your work is usually marketed to readers ages 6-10. How did that become your sweet spot?

I don’t know, but I do think about it sometimes. I mean, I’m definitely writing so that I’ll have something to draw. I didn’t write till I was much older—I went to grad school when I was 30 or so, and we had to write, and I had never done it, and it was painful. But I learned that it’s better to do your own writing, because you get to draw what you choose.

Later, I took a continuing education writing class at NYU. I feel like that was really helpful. It wasn’t fun­. I think other people were having fun, but I was not having fun. It was writing for adults, and my stories were so bad. They were just boring and depressing. But for some reason, I can write a funny story for 6- to 10-year-olds.

Elementary school, that’s a really good time. It’s before you get to that place where you worry about being cool. In a way it’s sort of a golden age, in my opinion, as someone who visits schools. When you get to fifth or sixth grade, all of a sudden, the kids don’t want to draw, because they’re worried about what other kids think. Before [self-consciousness sets in] they’re amazing; they come up with the best ideas. 

What’s your favorite part of school visits?

I always draw a picture with the kids where they tell me what to draw. It’s like, “Some of you think of a character, and then someone else think of the setting, and then we’ll build a scene together.” Sometimes they’re terrible, but every once in a while, they’ll be so amazing. Sometimes I wonder, How am I going to make this work? But we always manage to finish it. We always come up with something unique, something one person could never make on their own. And because they’re 6 to 10, they think whatever you draw is great, which is great [in and of itself].

Would you be open to someone turning Detective Sweet Pea into an animated film or series?

Yeah! Why not? It went so well the first time.

What was the most surprising part of having Robot Dreams made into a movie?

That it actually happened. That it was so good. [Pablo Berger] did an amazing job. Anything could have happened; he could have changed it all. He just made so many great choices: set it in New York, added funny jokes in the background. He added great characters, great music. I feel so lucky about how everything worked out. 

Editor at large Megan Labrise hosts the Fully Booked .