Needham mystery writer shows children key to hidden treasure
While vacationing in a village outside Hamburg, mystery author Eleanor Rosellini's son happened upon an overgrown observatory that stuck out among the manicured gardens surrounding their guest house.
''The place was so magical," said Rosellini, whose imagination sprouted all sorts of scenarios about the possible secrets locked inside the abandoned building.
As it turned out, what wasn't locked inside was the telescope; it had been shipped to Australia so that its owner could chart the southern skies. But that didn't stop the Needham author, whose motto could be: Why can't fiction be stranger than truth?
Rosellini turned the building into the subject of ''The Mystery on Observatory Hill" (Emmis Books, $5.95), which hits the shelves this month. It is the third book in the Hidden Treasure Mysteries series.
''That's what I like about fiction," said Rosellini, who delights in transforming everyday occurrences into a string of adventures. In her new book, she gives the observatory a new past as the deserted workplace of an eccentric astronomer who died in 1919 during the Spanish influenza epidemic.
Always looking, listening, and collecting real-life clues for her mysteries, Rosellini is attracted to the dramatic potential of historic places and the people she encounters in her daily life. The writer builds the plot around settings and objects, rather than first sketching out the action.
Along with the antiques she acquires on her travels and from local flea markets, Rosellini looks to her children for inspiration. She based the brother-sister sleuths, Elizabeth and Jonathan Pollack, on her own children. Stefan, 18, graduated this year from Needham High School. Alissa, 21, recently graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Alissa now helps her mother edit the books.
Stefan and Alissa developed a secret knocking code as children, as do the detectives in Rosellini's mysteries. ''We've become part of the books," said Stefan, so much so that he has autographed copies of the book in Jonathan's name.
This blending of reality and imagination tends to bewitch children, who often ask Rosellini if the clues in her stories are true.
During a presentation for Lorin Teres's fourth-grade class at the Williams Elementary School in Newton, Rosellini shared some of the antiques she collected over the years, many of which have become objects and clues in her mysteries.
''Is there really a note in the portrait?" a student asked, referring to her first book, ''The Puzzle in the Portrait" (Guild Press, 1999), which the class was reading together. Another chimed in, ''You know how there's a pond by Pa's house? Is there really a pond?"
Rosellini steered the discussion toward imagination and writing. She showed the children objects and asked them to guess what they were for: they described an Italian cookie press as ''something that toasts toast") and a darning egg as Mexican maracas.
''Writing starts in your head as soon as you start noticing things," she told the students. ''How can a person, a grandmother or grandfather, be a treasure?"
Anders Klumpp, 10, raised his hand. ''They can tell you stories about the old days, and you can pass them down," he said.
Rosellini, 56, had never considered writing as a career before she began. As her husband, Jay Rosellini, 58, established his career -- he now chairs the department of humanities and modern languages at Suffolk University -- they lived in Germany, Indiana, and two separate stints in Boston. During their first years in Boston in the 1970s, Rosellini worked as a paralegal editor at the Supreme Judicial Court.
Rosellini devoted much of her time to environmental affairs. In West Lafayette, Ind., for instance she worked on a prairie restoration project.
Her affinity for all-things green is apparent in the books. The characters don't throw away trash; they recycle. In the third book, the young detectives are puzzled by cigarette butts, potential clues, they find at the observatory; they ''hardly know anyone who smokes."
Rosellini recalls the ''epiphany summer" 13 years ago that spurred her to write. She and her children were visiting her father in Lake Geneva, Wis. Her father took out a carton containing the contents from Rosellini's great-grandmother's writing desk. Among them were a diary from 1796 and a Civil War-era letter.
Rosellini remembered her great-grandmother had been interested in family history. ''Here was an incredible treasure that had been moldering in a box for years," Rosellini said.
That same summer her uncle, Walter Florence, restored the parlor of his mid-19th-century house in Indiana. The parlor had always evoked for her the mystery and intrigue of the Nancy Drew stories she devoured as a girl.
''Everything I needed for a mystery was in my own life," Rosellini said she realized, and ''the stories poured out."
She wrote ''The Puzzle in the Portrait" in six months and gave the unpublished manuscript to her children for Christmas. Rosellini soon wrote three more stories, but it wasn't until her children brought the books to school that she considered publishing them. Her children's friends requested sequels, and she realized that she had a knack for surprise twists that delighted young readers.
Rosellini wrote the original manuscript in a ''Nancy Drew style" that her editor advised her to update. The detective story finally went to press in 1999 after ''many, many revisions."
She combines the drama of Nancy Drew novels with the logic and deductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmes, her other favorite detective. As she mulls her own mysteries, the character Elizabeth often asks herself what the Victorian investigator would have done.
''Elementary, my dear Watson," Elizabeth told her brother, referring to how a piece of chewing gum would help solve a mystery.
But unlike Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes, the detective duo in Rosellini's books are not after burglars and murderers. Instead, they piece together clues and decode symbols to uncover treasures from the past. Through her books, she hopes to both prod her readers to take a closer look at their everyday surroundings and to sharpen their thinking skills.
''I'm not as interested in solving crimes as I am with solving puzzles," she said.
Just ask one of Rosellini's biggest fans, her son, Stefan, who posted a review of her first book on
'' 'The Puzzle in the Portrait' [written by my mom] is a must-read book," he wrote. ''I thought this was a very interesting and funny book, which not only will entertain children, it will also teach a valuable lesson in the keeping of family memories."
Eleanor Rosellini is scheduled to appear at a ''Solve-a-Mystery" presentation Aug. 14 at Borders Books on Route 9 in Framingham. For more on her books, visit hiddentreasuremysteries.com. 
