A recent Canadian story book uses crop circles as its theme, as outlined by JOANNA EMERY…


‘The Mysterious Visitor’, by accomplished Canadian author Joan Weir, is one of the few children’s books on the market today that features crop circles. [Another, first published by Doubleday in 1994 and recently re-published, is ‘Harriet’s Hare’ by Dick King-Smith; the tale of an extra-terrestrial hare found in a crop circle! - Ed]

Written for young readers ages 10 and up, ‘The Mysterious Visitor’ is the third book in Weir’s popular ‘Lion and Bobbi Mystery’ series.

Set in the beautiful Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, twelve year-old Lion and his fourteen year-old sister, Bobbi, become involved as their father investigates a suspicious case of endangered wildlife poaching on a friend’s environmentally-sensitive land - land on which an unusual crop circle has just appeared.

Weir has obviously done some research on crop circles. Her characters’ dialogues include casual references to ‘bent plant shafts’ and hoaxes made by ‘men with boards’, although a smattering of texts that describe ‘radiation emitted from some sort of hovering air vehicle’ and crop circles with ‘a high concentration of electricity’ seems a little off-base. Plus there’s the ‘mysterious girl’ that keeps reappearing. Does she have anything to do with the crop circle? I won’t give away the book’s conclusion but ‘The Mysterious Visitor’ does seem to lump crop circles in with the whole alien, UFO and paranormal scene. To her credit, Weir has written a highly captivating junior novel that is sure to peak any young reader’s interest in crop circles.

And I’d say it’s a safe bet that we’ll see more children’s books that deal with the crop circle phenomenon in the future.


THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
by Joan Weir, $9.95 CDN; 187 pgs. ISBN 1-55192-504-4

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