GUEST BLOGGER HEATHER PREUSSER
It’s merry-go-round mischief for Hitch the hedgehog! Hitch, a hardboiled hedgehog detective, and his food-loving sidekick, Vinnie the rat, are back with another mystery to solve in The Carousel Caper, the second book in my Hedgehog Whodunit chapter book series (Andrews McMeel, 2025) illustrated by Gal Weizman. This time around someone has stolen the wooden cheetah from the City Zoo’s carousel. This lesson invites students to work together to design and build their own carousel, encouraging them to think critically, solve puzzles collaboratively, and explain their engineering choices logically.
Materials
- Paper plates (for the base and canopy)
- Straws, popsicle sticks and/or pipe cleaners (for the poles)
- Cardboard tubes or pencils (for the center pole)
- Play-Doh and/or tape
- Paper and markers (to plan their design and draw the animals)
- Scissors
- Hole puncher
- Optional: Gems, stickers, paint (for decorations)
Essential question
How can we collaborate to design and build a working carousel that spins smoothly and safely?
Objectives
- To use critical reading and inference skills to move from reading fiction to reading informational text in order to apply STEM skills to a creative project.
- To design a carousel that spins on its base (for younger grades).
- To design a carousel that spins on its base and has one other moving part (for older grades).
- To meet language benchmarks for fiction and informational text while engaging physics, math and problem-solving benchmarks at various grade levels.
Lesson plan instructions
Prepare
- Read aloud an excerpt from The Carousel Caper: pages 17-20 when Hitch notices that the wooden ostrich on the zoo’s carousel is also missing. Ask students to make a prediction: How did someone get the animal off the carousel?
- Tell students that today they are the carousel engineers; they’ve been hired to design and build a better carousel—one where wooden animals don’t go missing!
- Activate prior knowledge by analyzing this carousel diagram from “How Products Are Made,” filling in any gaps as necessary:
- canopy: roof of the carousel
- center pole or axel: the big pole in the center of a carousel; a cog, or gear, sits at the top
- sweeps: rods that stick out from the gear
- crankshafts: located at the end of each sweep; when they spin, the poles with the animals move up and down
- poles: hang down from the crankshafts and hold an animal at the end of each
It may also help to watch these short two-minute videos from the BBC’s Maddie’s Do You Know? series. The first one introduces how a carousel works, and the second one explains how the animals go up and down.
Design & build
- Place students in small groups and hand out paper and writing utensils. Working collaboratively, they first need to come up with a theme for their carousel: Do they want to feature animals, insects, reptiles, dinosaurs, etc.? They will need at least four riders per carousel.
- Students can then draw a diagram, or blueprint, of their design, labeling each part (base, canopy, center pole/axel, rods with hanging animals, sweeps and crankshafts (optional challenge)).
- In their groups, students should discuss and be able to answer these questions:
- How does the carousel spin, or rotate?
- How will they keep it stable and balanced?
- How will they prevent any of their animals from going missing?
- Hand out the materials and give groups time to construct their models. (I cut out some of Gal Weizman’s illustrations from the book).
- Have students test their prototypes, learning from this test and solving for the problem, just like Hitch does.
- At the end, ask students to synthesize:
- How would they make their carousel even better if they had more time and/or materials?
- What do they think will happen in the book?
- How would they advise the zoo to make their carousel safer and what advice would they give the detectives?
Optional extensions
If students enjoyed being carousel engineers, have them choose at least one of these optional challenges:
- Make their carousel faster or safer.
- Make their carousel more stable.
- Make their design specific to their school.
- Write an additional chapter for The Carousel Caper, featuring their carousel.
- Write an engineer’s report, explaining their design choices.
Featured image credit: Heather Preusser
Growing up in Maine, Heather Preusser read all the Nancy Drew mysteries. Every. Single. One. Now she writes her own mysteries featuring a hardboiled hedgehog detective and his tireless rodent sidekick solving animal antics at City Zoo. HEDGEHOG WHODUNIT, the first book in her chapter book series, released in October 2024 from Andrews McMeel. The second book, THE CAROUSEL CAPER, came out in July 2025, and the third book, THE PROTECTIVE ORDER OF PEANUTS (P.O.O.P.) will be available in 2026. She is also the author of the picture book A SYMPHONY OF COWBELLS (Sleeping Bear Press, 2017). When she’s not writing or teaching high school English, Heather plays with her six-year-old, a budding boxitect. She and her family live in Colorado. You can learn more at heatherpreusser.com and follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
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