Middle Grade Must Reads – September 2025 (Part One)

The blurb  sounded so fun and I couldn’t wait to meet Felix and his friends.

Welcome to the Lucky House takeaway! Serving delicious noodles, chips, and now a mystery to be solved…

Felix and his best friend Isaac are determined to solve the mystery of the broken money plant, but as they investigate they find an ancient coin that holds more questions than answers. Could there be a secret treasure to find?

With the help of ‘Nosy’ Nina, the trio set out to follow the clues. The Lucky House Detective Agency is open for business!

What a fun book, I mean what more do you want in a book, a mystery, a detective agency, and a lot of food.

 I absolutely loved the idea of a detective agency based in a chinese takeaway., and the agency being run by kids.

There is a great cast of characters, all diverse, the dialogue is natural and believable. And this book gives the reader a great look at Chinese culture.

There is a big theme of friendship and community running through this book. But it’s also learning how to tolerate people you find annoying.

This is an action packed mystery that will keep you hooked until the end.

The illustrations are lovely and would make a great class read for years 3 upwards.

• Written by Zohra Nabi
• Published by Simon and Schuster

‘The dark was deep; it opened like a cavernous mouth and swallowed the boy whole.

Cassia Thorne leads a double life. By day, she sells ballads at Bartholomew Fair. By night she spends her evenings locked up in Fleet Prison. Cassia has plans of escaping both of these lives. But this year there are rumours of children being snatched off of the streets of London and no one willing to help.

So Cassia decides to take matters into her own hands; with the help of a young pickpocket, Teo and her friend Felix, Cassia starts to investigate the disappearances. She soon discovers a sinister conspiracy at the heart of the city – mysterious men in blue coats and whispers of a beast that lives in the deep dark tunnels below the city. Can Cassia get to the bottom of the mystery and rescue the missing children before it’s too late?

First things first, this is the first book in a new series.

Secondly it has a beautiful cover that will make you pick it up.

And finally it has a map, what more would you want in a book?

This book has the right ingredients for a good book, adventure, action, magic and the right amount of terror/horror to keep the reader hooked. It also has a mystery at the heart of the book.

It was a great first book of what promises to be a great series.

Unicorns in Uniform : The Unicorns Sneeze

Written by Tracy Curran

Illustrated by Steve Wood.

Published by Fox and Ink Books on 2nd October 2025

I love a unicorn and in fact when my children were young we all had our own unicorns that we would ride around the neighborhood most days.

So I was excited when this popped through my letterbox.

High up in the Mystical Mountains, YAN YETI has a bad case of the sneezes, causing extreme weather in the form of snowstorms! When a ginormous ‘ATISHOO!’ triggers an avalanche, and young YO-YO YETI goes missing, air and mountain rescue unicorn SUNNY and his unicopter BEE are tasked with an urgent rescue mission: to venture out onto the mountain and find her.

But out on the snowy slope, SUNNY starts struggling with strange spells of dizziness. As he calls in the other unicorns and a swoop of albatrosses to help, can they save YO-YO YETI before it is too late?

This is such a great read, it’s fun and action packed.

This is ideal for children from 5 years plus, it has a bigger font, short chapters and a lot of illustrations. This is perfect for those children who are starting to become independent readers.

This is going to be so popular when it gets into school.

Rosa by Starlight

• by Hilary McKay, illustrated by Keith Robinson
• Published by Macmillan

For some reason this had been sitting on my TBR pile far too long so I took it to bed with me one night and read it in one night. And I really enjoyed my trip to Venice.

This book is written with so much care and empathy that you won’t be able to stop yourself rooting for Rosa.

Rosa has always believed there is magic in the world. Or at least, she hopes there is. She lost her parents when she was four, and her aunt and uncle moved into her home not long after, transforming it from a messy place of love and warmth to a cold world of business. Their approach to family is as phony as the plastic grass they sell, keeping Rosa at arm’s length and tucking her in at night by locking her in her room. Now eleven, Rosa’s loneliness threatens to overwhelm her. Her only solace is the magic she sees around her, particularly in a cat named Balthazar who comes to—and through—her window. When all the teachers at her school win the lottery and quit their jobs, Rosa’s aunt and uncle seize the opportunity to put an evil plan into action. They whisk Rosa away to Venice, intending to abandon her there. Luckily for Rosa, there are cats in Venice—and a laughing boy in a gondola and a family making sure she is fed. In Rosa’s darkest hour, can the magic she’s never lost faith in save the day?

You couldn’t help but feel for Rosa, an orphan, someone who is unloved by her aunt and uncle, and someone who is locked in their bedroom every night.

She is the typical book orphan, with a grim life.

But she believes in magic, and maybe something special will happen to her….

There were parts that reminded me of Roald Dahl’s Matilda and James and the giant peach.

This book would better suit an older MG reader 10 +