Solve Your Own Mystery: The Missing Magic
If you’re struggling to get your middle-grader to do some reading, Solve Your Own Mystery: The Missing Magic is a great place to start. It's a hilarious fantasy town full of ghosts, zombies, and unicorns, and my daughter got to be a lead detective on the opening day of "Magicon" after all the magic suddenly vanishes. It's like the classic Choose Your Own Adventure books, but it has fun illustrations and even comedy that my daughter loved. The way its structured is: unlike older pick-your-path books where one wrong choice leads to a sudden dead end, this story lets kids follow different clue paths and actually solve the case every time. So that make it really fun for my daughter.
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Our whole family is obsessed with the Descendants universe, so we were excited to see this new prequel. It starts on the first day of school for young Maleficent, Hades, Captain Hook, and even Cinderella. When the Headmaster Merlin goes missing along with the Sword in the Stone, these famous fairy-tale kids have to do some teamwork together to work on the case before the whole academy collapses. What I really appreciate about this one is how it adds a fun, puzzle-solving mystery into a world my kid loves. The chapters are short and the dialogue is fun, and the magic school settingreminded me of Harry Potter, with a twist.
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This book is a almost like a modern, Latina-centric Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. The story follows four best friends who will be entering ninth grade as they try to hold their friend group together through a book club hosted in a bookstore in New Mexico. My daughter loves graphic novels, so she really liked how the book alternates between traditional text and black-and-white graphic novel chapters.
It focused on the real parts of growing up, things like navigating new crushes, friend group dynamcis, family expectations, and personal identity. Between the delicious family dynamic details (conchas = yum!!), it's a heartwarming story that will hopefully get your middle-schooler off their screen and excited to read an actual book!
