kid reads: mystery series

Got another round-up of some good kid reads for you here - a set of mystery series that you might not know about, but that your budding mystery reader might enjoy (and always a bonus to have a series when you've got an eager reader, so it's easy to find their next book!). There are of course the classic series like Boxcar Children and Encyclopedia Brown, but on revisiting them I admit I found them a bit outdated, maybe even boring... these ones though get a thumbs up from Hendrik:

Clubhouse Mysteries: starting with The Buried Bones Mystery, this series from the excellent author Sharon M. Draper. Ziggy and his crew of friends build a clubhouse and decide to get together to solve some mysteries. The characters are fun and the tone overall heartwarming (bonus for me is that they are brown children, just living life - that's a kind of diversity I want to make sure to include in my kid's reading life); beyond the mysteries, themes include friendship and helping the community. The books fairly short and readable solo for 2nd grade and up, I'd think. 

The Great Cake Mystery: if you enjoy Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, you're going to enjoy these kid versions along with your little reader - they have Precious as a young girl in Botswana, where we see her detective skills and interests piqued as she solves problems like who ate the slice of cake that went missing from the classroom (helping us learn that immediately blaming the "most likely" culprit is not fair), and where a movie star lion ended up after escaping from a safari camp (in book 2), and what happened to her friends' family's missing cow (in book 3). The writing is great, Precious is a wonderful character, and there's an excellent emphasis on things like kindness/empathy/acceptance on top of the mystery stories. Highly recommend these as read-aloud starting maybe 5-6 years old, and readable solo for 2nd/3rd graders.

Nate the Great: Nate is a kid who loves pancakes, hanging out with his friend Annie, and solving mysteries. He's got the cool detachment of a classic noir detective (and the costume to boot!), and solves neighborhood mysteries like what happened to a missing cat, this is a classic series, but I feel like it holds up - and there are tons of them, especially great for seasonal reading, with titles like Nate the Great and... the Mushy Valentine, the Crunchy Christmas, the Halloween Hunt. I like how it's an introduction into procedural type of detective work, in a fun, kid-friendly way of course - Nate is methodical about gathering clues and thinking through them before reaching his conclusions. Short books that often have fun fact or activities inserts in the back for extra learning/interaction, these are great for beginning readers, and amusing enough for adults too.

Mr. Penguin and the Lost Treasure: Mr. Penguin is an adventuring character with a sidekick Colin the spider, who gets called upon to find a museum's missing treasure (this book), tries to decipher some strange noises coming from an old fortress after he crash lands his plane by it (book 2), and while on a cruise ship for vacation finds something fishy going on (book 3). You know, in the way that mysteries always seem to pop up no matter where a detective is hanging out. The overall tone is quirky, humorous, and fun; the illustrations are very jaunty and eye-catching; and it's got short chapters and fairly large size print, so not too intimidating for a reluctant reader.

Investigators: a graphic novel series (also has a book 2 and book 3 coming soon) about a duo of alligators who travel the sewers solving cases and rounding up crooks that's pretty goofy and bound to have some light potty humor, given that they live in the sewers and all... This is a series that would be good for kids who are into ones like Dogman; not sure it's top-quality literature, but sometimes you just gotta let kids read what they're into in order to get them into reading (and usually all the Dogman books are checked out from the library! That's how we happened upon these a while back, when browsing the graphic novel section in search of a replacement).

These are all great series for early-ish readers, though Hendrik still enjoys them all even if he's reading at a higher level on his own these days - most especially the last two, because they particularly feed his literary interest in adventure stories (here are some of his other recent favorites in that realm!). I've got some other mystery series that I'd like to check out with him soon though, to level up a bit: The Mysterious Benedict Society, Winterhouse trilogy, Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library (regarding the latter two: I'm a sucker for books about books/libraries; also, they looks like a puzzle mystery kind of setup, so great for kids who have that analytical/puzzle-minded brain).

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