Trixie Belden and the Mystery in Arizona; Trixie Belden and the Mysterious Code

 So Di's *real* Uncle Monty invites the Bob-Whites to spend Christmas in Arizona at his dude ranch. Once the gang gets there, though, they are met with bad news: Uncle Monty's entire staff up and left under mysterious circumstances, so Monty has no one to wait tables or clean the rooms. Trixie of course volunteers the Bob-Whites' services, and Monty eagerly accepts. There are a lot of mysteries going on in Arizona at once: why did the Orlandos leave so suddenly? Why is Rosita so unhappy? Why can't Trixie concentrate long enough to get her math homework done? :) Of course in the end it all works out. I remember being annoyed with this book as a kid by all the history and descriptions of Arizona, a state I was fairly familiar with, and Mexican food. I found it incredible that they'd never had tortillas or guacamole before. Growing up in So Cal, that food is a staple, so I was like what's the big deal, you guys?

I didn't really remember this one, at least not how it ended. I remembered the stick figure code, and I vaguely remember trying to learn it as a kid, too. There have been a rash of vandalism and burglaries at the kids' school, and the board is cracking down on non-sanctioned clubs. The Bob-Whites have to prove their worth in order to keep their club, so they decide to hold a big antiques show, with the proceeds going to UNICEF.
Let me stop for a minute. First of all, I didn't understand how the school board could legally tell them what they could do AFTER SCHOOL AND OFF OF SCHOOL GROUNDS. I mean, come on! If they told me "nope, you can't have your club anymore" I would have laughed to death, even at fourteen or sixteen or however old these kids were. Jim and Brian were supposed to be smart, why didn't one of them tell the principal or the guidance counselor of whoever it was to buzz off? And what about their parents? If I came home from school and told my dad I couldn't have my club with my friends anymore, he would have been on the phone in half a second telling the school board where to shove it.
At any rate, so the kids panic, thinking the school's going to force them to give up their club and they start prepping like mad for this antique show. Things get stolen, Jim and Trix and Brian are caught in a blizzard, there's a Valentine's Day party and Jim gives Trixie an orchid, a whole bunch of stuff is going on in this one. In the end Trixie helps the cops catch the bad guy and the antique show goes off splendidly, raising tons of money to buy milk for poor kids in third world countries who have never had milk in their lives (and honestly are better off because of it, but veganism wasn't big in the early 1960s when this book was first written). It was still fun, if completely and utterly bonkers.
This book marked the first of the "Katherine Kenny" written ones. Julie Campbell, a real person, wrote the first six and then decided she was done, so the publisher had a team of in house writers keep up the series. There was no one person named "Katherine Kenny". Apparently this was a fairly common practice (I remember being devastated as kid when I found out Ann M. Martin didn't write all the Baby-Sitter's Club books). So the tone changed, and there are a lot of discrepancies (all of a sudden Tom doesn't like horses?).