If you, like me, have a voracious young reader who loves learning, then you probably also love it when you find a series you can trust to entertain your child and feed their love of knowledge. Educational books don’t need to be non-fiction, sometimes when the facts are hidden by the fun children learn even more!

Here are three of my favourite Junior Fiction series for making those synapses spark…

• The Cryptic Casebook of Coco Carlomagno and Alberta
• Juliet Nearly a Vet
• Sage Cookson

The Cryptic Casebook of Coco Carlomagno and Alberta

by Ursula Dubosarsky, illus. by Terry Denton

This series is a hoot, filled with humour and suspense, codes and clues. No other guinea pigs rock detective work quite like Coco and Alberta.

BEWARE! Our-yiggle ild-chiggle ill-wiggle art-stiggle alking-tiggle in-iggle ode-ciggle. So be prepared for that… 🙂

All the puzzles have help pages at the back, EXCEPT (of course… isn’t that always the way…) the only one we can never solve. If anyone knows the secret behind the spelling of Coco’s name on the medals at the end, please put us out of our misery and tell us what it is!

Juliet Nearly A Vet

by Rebecca Johnson, illus. by Kyla May

Each of these books is chock-a-block full of fab knowledge about animals. They’re so funny too, causing me to wake to giggling coming from my early-morning reader’s room (what a nice way to wake up, too!).

This series is science and ethics and friendship and fun. Just be sure to read each book first, in case your child tests you with the Quiz at the end!!

Sage Cookson

by Sally Murphy, illus. by Celeste Hulme

Don’t read these when you’re hungry…

Sage’s parents are TV chefs, and the books follow her as she explores the world and its food. There’s sleuthing and texting and friendship and lots of eating.

But that’s okay, because there are also recipes to inspire your junior reader into the kitchen!

I bet these fab series will catch the imagination in your classroom or household. Have you got any other recommendations we can try at ours?