Geronimo Stilton, The Phantom Bandit is go-to elementary reading

There are a couple of book series that firmly hammer things home to those who are in elementary school. One of the most popular series of books in that category is Geronimo Stilton. Our oldest (currently in 3^rd grade) has been reading this series since he was in first grade. The books started out with us reading them to him and for about the past year he’s been reading them by himself. Geronimo Stilton, The Phantom Bandit is book 70 in the series and continues to entertain the elementary school set like few others.

This book, as all of the other 69 in the series do a great job of introducing the uninitiated as to who Geronimo Stilton is. Just look on the back page and you’ll see that he runs a newspaper, but whose hobby of writing adventure stories often takes center stage. The characters are based in New Mouse City, it’s capital of Mouse Island and every book has a wide variety of brightly colored art, different sized and colored font.

In The Phantom Bandit, Geronimo is sent on a vacation to Cacklefur Castle where he immediately stumbles onto a mystery. This is a Halloween tale where spooky things are happening, but are they mouse-made or truly spectral?

If you’re reading The Phantom Bandit as a read-along book to those children who are emerging readers you’ll be able to read between one to three chapters. The text and illustrations are such that you’ll get sucked into reading it and not realize. The text varies in its appearance, which does make reading the books quite entertaining for those that do voices whilst they read to young ones. There are some big word puns or long names like Boneham or Miss Creepella that will be difficult for emerging readers to tackle solo.

Kids will love this series. Those in fifth grade might tire of it and want something ‘older’, but those younger than that will wear the pages out and ask you to help them collect all of the books. Good luck with that one…..

Boys will enjoy Geronimo Stilton more than girls by a little bit. However, girl who are looking for a book series that has the clever attitude and adventure of this, with just a bit more girl vibe, check out Thea Stilton. It’s similar to Geronimo, but with more princess, castles and fairies.