It’s finally time! I’ve talked a bit about everyone’s favorite vampire-fairy in a lot of my past articles. She just hit twenty books (and a TV show) which is my baseline for Series Spotlights (the books not the TV show). Get ready for one of the coolest modern chapter book series.

Premise

Isadora Moon is a vampire-fairy.

That’s it. That’s the premise.

But the magic is everything that comes from that. It’s a bloody brilliant cracking ace wicked insert-other-Britishisms-here premise. This series is British, by the way.

You might have noticed the title of book one is simply “Goes to School”. In any other series, that would be the norm. Of course the kid goes to school. You don’t need a whole book about it. But with Isadora, you absolutely do.

Does she go to a vampire school or a fairy school? What do those two things even entail? Oh, she doesn’t go to school yet? Which means she has to decide which to go to? Does she even get to decide, or do her parents? Because her dad’s a vampire and her mom’s a fairy, and they both have different opinions on the matter. Spoilers: She ultimately decides to go to a human school, to the surprise of both her parents.

And that’s just book one!

Characters

Isadora’s a bit like Magic Tree House, where we don’t have a lot of recurring characters due to the “event-of-the-week” nature of the series. Sure, she has named classmates and a house ghost and a baby sister and a few other characters like that, but they really don’t come up enough to mention. Here’s a few that do:

Isadora Moon
Our vampire-fairy main character. Is she eight? Do we ever get her age? She’s pretty good at fairy magic and pretty good at flying. She’s also really nice. This would normally be a yawn write-off stock-standard trait in any other chapter book series, but Isadora really kills it with the kindness. Usually because she immediately wants to help anyone and everyone with their problem. So it creates each story’s situation pretty seamlessly.

Pink Rabbit
Isadora’s best friend, a stuffed rabbit that her mom brought to life. Because fairy magic can do that. Good thing every fairy in the series is nice. Pink Rabbit’s pretty cool, and is fun to look for in the bigger scene arts.

Countess Cordelia Moon
Isadora’s mom is a summer fairy (there’s different types!). She keeps her hair wild and loves flowers and is very good at fairy magic. She’s also a mom, and as such is usually the voice of reason between the two parents.

Emerald
Isadora’s second mermaid friend, and star of her own series (and upcoming TV show). We only see her in her intro book before she gets her own books, but she’s kind of a rebel and does her own thing. Her parents are divorced and suddenly being a mermaid princess is hard when you’ve got your own thing going on.

Mirabelle Starspell
The almost-best character in Isadora Moon also has her own series, like Emerald. It’s not at twenty books yet though. If you’ve read my other articles you might be shocked that Mirabelle isn’t my favorite character in this series (unless you read that one article). Spoilers for the eventual Mirabelle Series Spotlight: She’s the best character in her own series. Surely that will hold for nine more books.

Mirabelle remains the same in Isadora: she’s mischievous and troublesome. This is amplified in Isadora Moon because Isadora is so nice. She’s always hesitant around her older cousin. After the events of the first book Mirabelle is in, Isadora gets really hesitant around her and immediately assumes she’s going to cause problems (which she does). Even in the book where they call her dad to help with a problem, she butts in and calls Isadora out for causing mischief.

Count Bartholomew Moon
Best character time. This guy. Is so funny. That’s normal for chapter book dads, but the Count wins first place. He just complains about everything and it’s hilarious. Non-red foods, messing up his hair, the sun existing for half the day. And it doesn’t stop at himself, he actively complains at his wife and daughter for putting him in these dreadful situations. It’s so hard being a vampire, you can’t even imagine.

The Realities of Localization

The United Kingdom seems like the magical land of chapter books, because boy do a lot of series do well there and not here in America:

Our girl Isadora only has eight of her twenty books released here across the pond. Twenty-three if you count her three activity books. Can you imagine being a fan and not even realizing two-thirds of the series exists? Or the import costs associated with bringing them over if you do???

Muncaster’s other series in The World of Isadora Moon, Mirabelle and Emerald, are not available at all in the US. That’s fourteen books and counting. And Isadora’s in a few of them too! And Emerald has a TV show coming! Better move to the UK!

It’s not just Muncaster’s books either, there’s a ton of other series not getting reach:

Pizazz only got three of her six books localized.
Unicornia is seven books strong, and only now is book one getting localized.
Sorceline 6 and 7 aren’t escaping France.
Melowy? More like, “Never getting fully localized-y”.

And that’s just to America! Who knows what other series aren’t getting the international attention they deserve? Crying shame. I’d better start learning French.

Series Breakdown

Don’t listen to Goodreads, there’s twenty books in the series. Nineteen and Twenty just aren’t listed yet. As is the norm with chapter book series, you can read these in any order. Some books reference past books or have characters from past books, but you don’t need to know that.

I might actually list all twenty books this time, because I like Isadora that much and most of the books do some cool things. I think the ordering and some of the titles might be a bit off between the US and UK books, so forgive me if I misspeak:

(1) Isadora Moon Goes To School – I talked about this in the Premise section. What a great book one.
(2) Isadora Moon Goes Camping – At the beach, where she meets not-Emerald, and her dad hates everything. It’s great.
(3) Isadora Moon Has a Birthday – Why do human magicians not use real magic? “It’s just the way they do it at human parties.” Shrug.
(4) Isadora Moon Goes to the Ballet – Isadora meets one of her heroines.
(5) Isadora Moon Gets in Trouble – Because of Mirabelle. Isadora did nothing wrong.
(6) Isadora Moon Goes On a School Trip – To a cool haunted house, where she meets her future house ghost Oscar. Then Oscar proceeds to fade into the background for the rest of the series, literally and figuratively. I hear he’s in the TV show a bit more though.
(7) Isadora Moon Goes to the Fair – Mirabelle’s here, but she’s busy. Don’t worry.
(8) Isadora Moon Makes Winter Magic – By animating a snow boy. This one gets a bit Kevin Henkes-level of existential crisis, but it’s ok, Isadora figures it out. Crisis averted.
(9) Isadora Moon Has a Sleepover – At her human friend Zoe’s house. They make cakes.
(10) Isadora Moon Puts on a Show – With a new vampire human friend!
(11) Isadora Moon Goes on Holiday – To the beach again, and cleans up the ocean with Marina.
(12) Isadora Moon Goes to a Wedding – Where Mirabelle strikes again with her signature shrinking potion (which is consistently a powder in the other two books it’s in too!).
(13) Isadora Moon Meets the Tooth Fairy – And wins the award for the best chapter book about losing a tooth.
(14) Isadora Moon and the Shooting Star – Isadora meets a literal alien!!! I can’t think of another series that’s done this or could get away with it. Maybe Franny. And then the series goes back to normal and there’s just aliens in the universe now. Wild.
(15) Isadora Moon Gets the Magic Pox – The one where Isadora’s baby sister Honeyblossom matters!
(16) Isadora Moon Under the Sea – This is where she meets Emerald.
(17) Isadora Moon and the New Girl – This is where she doesn’t meet Emerald. She meets a mean girl instead, who turns out to be a nice girl.
(18) Isadora Moon and the Frost Festival – Probably the most dad jokes per minute of any of the books. I was laughing so hard I kept having to stop reading.
(19) Isadora Moon Helps Out – The other one where Isadora’s baby sister Honeyblossom matters!
(20) Isadora Moon Makes a Wish – The only book I think I’ve read where Isadora actually gets mad. Also wild. I didn’t think it was possible.

Cool Stuff

The colors
Not a lot of books have this mono-color thing going on, and it looks really cool. Black and pink also sell the aesthetic of Isadora being a vampire (black) and a fairy (pink). They’re even consistent with it across series, with Mirabelle using black/purple (witch/fairy) and Emerald using black/green (mermaid/mermaid, or I guess rebel/mermaid).

Isadora’s parents are really prominent
Like Junie B Jones levels of prominent. Unlike Junie, Isadora’s parents are a joy to see. I’d love to see a book that goes into how they met.

Isadora likes peanut butter (toast).
It’s a little thing, and it never matters, but it comes up way more than it has any right to. A nice bit of characterization that remains a constant throughout the series. As a fan of peanut butter, I approve.

The front matter and back matter are super cool.
All of Muncaster’s chapter book series feature real life kid answers to questions that are on-theme for each book. This is just fun. Way more engaging than reading comprehension trivia questions. The back matter ranges from recipes to crafts to what-are-you style trivia questions. Even more fun.

Dad-isms
A curated selection of a few best dad quotes:

● “You got me in trouble at school, sending those bat invitations,” I told them.
Dad looked surprised.
“But they were so good.” he said, “Did you see how I used my very best handwriting?”

● (In response to Isadora’s classmate removing his fake fangs, revealing he’s just dressed as a vampire, and his fangs cost fifty cents).
“Fifty cents!” Dad gasped, “The nerve!”

● “Let’s go and look. Maybe it’s a burglar.” He picked up his glass of red juice. “I will throw this on the burglar,” he announced. “It will surprise him.”

Conclusion

There’s a fascinating article on Harriet Muncaster’s website about how Isadora Moon came to be. She branched off from the main character in her middle-grade series, Victoria Stitch. Give it a read.

But should you give Isadora Moon a read? Yeah. For sure. At least one. Probably all of them. A master class in premise. You don’t have to get crazy with it, just pick some traits and make them really matter. For twenty plus books and two side series. It’s that easy.

Stay tuned next month where I swear I’ll do an article that’s not a Series Spotlight. Three in a row’s plenty for now.