American Girl, Rebecca Rubin, solves the mystery of "The Crystal Ball"

 True to the American Girl tradition, the stories of Rebecca Rubin integrate lessons about accepting diversity and female independence while offering an entertaining story.  In New York City, before America’s involvement in WWI, immigrant families lived and worked together, creating communities built on mutual trust rather than a common genealogy or first language.  This is why, when things start going missing in the brownstone where Rebecca and her family live, there is a high sense of betrayal.  The prime suspect in the thefts is Rebecca’s cousin, Josef, who’s come to live with her family for the summer.  As an aspiring carpenter, Josef has taken odd jobs in many of the apartments in the building, and appears to be the only person who had access to all the missing items.

Rebecca shows herself to be level headed, early in the story, when she’s quick to work out how a street fortune teller is likely reading body language and vocal cues to guess at her customer’s situation.  She even realizes that the vague answers the fortune teller gives out can easily mean a number of things, but the customer is quick to think it means what they want to hear.  Though Rebecca has a good head and a great deal of common sense for someone so young, she is still drawn into the hype over the stolen items, and allows herself to wonder if her cousin could be guilty.  When she notices him coming out of a pawnshop, she begins to worry that everyone’s accusations may hold merit.  Finding an excuse to scope out the pawnshop leads to further doubt when she notices items for sale that may very well be the items in question.

Not one to take appearances at face value, Rebecca keeps digging into the issue.  She is the first to posit that the buildings interim handyman, Mr. Silver, is a little suspicious – maybe too friendly, always hanging around, and able to pick locks with a hairpin.  Though Rebecca’s older sister, Sadie, doesn’t believe it could be Mr. Silver, she is willing to support Rebecca in her quest to find more information.  When the building’s janitor, Mr. Rossi – who’s laid up with a broken hand – wants to take his deceased wife’s special candlesticks to a fortune teller that Mr. Silver pointed him towards, Rebecca’s suspicions increase, and she and Sadie follow after.

Rebecca’s determination to find the truth, rather than accepting things as they seem, and her determination to see her friends taken care of, lead her to finding the thief, and she’s quick to figure out how he pulled it all off, too.  Even after she’s put in danger, she refuses to back down, and stands up to the pawnshop broker who bought all the stolen merchandise (and was refusing to sell back the family heirloom Josef’s father was forced to pawn earlier that year when the family wasn’t making ends meet).  She shows that keeping one’s head, not jumping to conclusions, and watching out for your friends is within every girls’ power.