Hope you've been following along with the Chapter Book Summer Series! I love finding chapter books for readers who are just starting chapter books. It's so exciting to see readers falling in love with these stories! Today I have 2 new series for readers who love fantasy animal stories
The Fabled Stables series
written by Jonathan Auxier
illustrated by Olga Demidova
I love Auxier's middle grade stories so I was so excited to hear he would have a chapter book series! Then when I opened the first book and saw that it was fully illustrated in color, wow! The books are simply gorgeous!
Meet Auggie. He lives on a small island and is the caretaker of the Fabled Stables. Amazing creatures live in these stables, like a hippopotomouse and a yawning abyss and, my favorite, a very sarcastic, talking stick-in-the-mud who can turn into any shape!
Every so often , the stables shake and shudder and a new stable appears. This means a new creature needs Auggie's attention. First he has to travel via the new stable to get the animal and then bring the animal back. Readers will really enjoy seeing which fantasmical creature is making an appearance in each book!
Coming in at under 100 pages with illustrations on every page, this book is very accessible to new-to-chapter-book readers. There is some challenging vocabulary, but the plotline is pretty straight forward without too much to keep track of for readers.
Recommendations:
for read aloud: grades kg-1
for independent reading: grades 1-3
The Animal Rescue Agency series
Case File: Little Claws
written by Eliot Schrefer
illustrated by Daniel Duncan
The first book in the series, and wow, does it look like a fun series! Meet Esquire Fox, she runs the Animal Rescue Agency, which has the most amazing tagline ever, "To each animal, the right to live a natural life." Esquire is dashing, brave, and is willing to put her life on the line to save animals from dastardly villains. Meet Mr. Pepper, Esquire's sidekick rooster, who has convinced Esquire to (mostly) give up her animal-eating ways. While you may not think a fox and a rooster would work well together, these two have found a way!
In this first book, they are up in the Arctic, trying to rescue a young polar bear cub who has been stranded on a floe and has floated far away from his mother. The culprit? A human! A man (wearing a suspiciously white fur cap that looks a bit too similar to polar bear fur) has set off an explosive that originally separated the cub from his mother. He's waiting far down stream to capture the cub and sell it to a zoo. Not if Esquire has something to say about it!
Infused with environment issues (hello, global warming) and the dangers humans can be to animals and their way of living, this book entertains and educates young readers. Fans of author Eliot Schrefer will know him from his upper middle grade titles and know he is an animal advocate!
This chapter book is a bit longer - around 150 pages - and does not have as many illustrations as the other chapter books I've shared in this Chapter Book Series. Younger readers who are very comfortable with their reading stamina and following a longer book will enjoy this series, but I think it's also a perfect length for older readers who need a shorter book. The fantasy has some fun tongue-in-cheek barbs that older readers will appreciate.
Recommendations:
for read aloud: grades 1-3
for independent reading: grades 2-5
Like what you see here? Be sure to stop by every Thursday for more chapter book suggestions! If you want to see all of the posts in the series, click on "Chapter Book Summer Series 2021 under the "Labels" section, located on the right side of the blog. See you again next week!
You find so many cool chapter book series! Both of these sound like tons of fun—I love the idea of creatures like a "hippopotomouse" from the Fabled Stables series, and the conservation element of the Animal Rescue Agency series sounds quite valuable as well. Thanks so much for the great post!
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