So I guess chapter books are the prime age group for activity books as well, because there sure are a lot of them. An article-load amount of them. Let’s look at as many as we can, shall we?

The Books

(For all these activities shown, you can right-click on them and open in a new tab to get a better look.)
To start, we need to have a good solid foundation. Let’s just begin with my personal favorite activity book:

The Ivy and Bean One

It makes sense that one of the most popular chapter book series has a really good activity book. Maybe it’s a testament to Annie Barrow’s integrity, because the entire book is written in character. Does that mean it’s canon?

Every page is full of character. I’m pretty sure that first one is the only time we’ve ever seen Ivy’s room apart from book 1. That last page is my favorite in the entire book. The “I would do it again.” prompt is the most Ivy and Bean thing ever. Note how it’s not worded as a question (Would you do it again?). It’s a leading statement intended to make you check “Yes”. Amazing. They even sign the forward in different handwritings. I’m surprised that Bean’s script is better than Ivy’s. Maybe she’s just writing badly on purpose.

Meet the Joneses

Another homerun. Two of them even. That last one’s a bit more normal.

These titles are all very Junie too. I love how “Valentime” is intentionally misspelled. And how Junie is trapped in the word search dimension in the puzzle book.

As you can see, those first two are written completely in character.

In Valentime, it’s just an extended intro to all the Valentine’s cards in the book. More importantly, for people following Junie, it also confirms that not only Grace, but also Lucille aren’t friends with Junie anymore.

In Top-Secret, Junie fills out each page first, so you can see how she did it before you fill yours out. No other activity book I’ve seen does this. Other than that, it’s a standard “journaling” type book.

The Puzzles book doesn’t really have much in the way of character, but it does have a lot of puzzles. Like a lot of puzzles. Probably the most bang-for-your-buck in terms of these types of books.

Snap Up Some Fun

This book was originally printed as two separate books: Book of Fun 1 and 2. With the rise in popularity and heroic amount of reprints, they decided to combine them into one book. Full color even!

Crude humor, as you’d expect from Captain Underpants. There’s even new comics and flip-o-ramas!

The World of Isadora Moon (Activity Books)

Everyone’s favorite vampire-fairy currently has four activity books (in the UK), because she’s that popular (in the UK). That’s two-hundred activities! And at least ten of them are different kinds!

Pretty standard stuff, but you might have noticed there’s a lot of numbers and math in these. Sorry, British series, maths. I guess the UK is really bent on getting kids to learn their sums, because these books are full of educational-focused activities. Now that I think about it, arithmetic is mentioned in UK chapter books quite a bit too. Hmm…

I Don’t Have A Good Header Name For The Judy Moody Books

Judes also has three activity books, because she’s also that popular (not just in the UK). Two of them are pretty standard, but that last one is very unique. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though.

A lot of involved crafts, which makes sense for the older age group. Also a lot of stickers!

Let’s get to that mystery one:

The book really preps you on how to (kind of) be a detective (sort of)! It tells you how to disguise yourself, how to spy, and the kinds of notes to keep track of. You’ll need that last part, because the majority of the book is actual new (canon?) short stories as shown in that last image. Each mini-mystery presents a case to solve as you read along.

A Rainbow of Magic (Stickers)

And the list goes on. There’s a lot more I’m not showing here. Maybe as many activity books as there are actual Rainbow Magic books. Why not when you have over five-hundred fairies (and counting)? Most of these are sticker-based. Put the specific stickers in a scene or dress-up games type of thing. The type of activities that make buying used ones to get stickers for your writing tablet very annoying.

Not much else to say here. They’re all pretty good buys if you’re just looking for stickers!

Even Clementine Has One!

I would have put this further up, but I honestly can’t find any images of this one. Yeah of course I own it, but pictures didn’t work super well for the Marie-Lune blog and I don’t have a scanner right now. Trust me, there’s activities in this one. Journaling-type activities.

The Teacher Aids

Activities aren’t just for books, they’re for schools too. A lot of chapter book publisher’s websites have some kind of activity or teacher aid-type material for download. Sometimes you have to dig a bit to find them. Because they’re website-based, some of them aren’t available anymore either, which is a shame.

Llama Quest has a full activity book and some other things you can download here.
Isadora Moon has some coloring sheets and make-your-own book downloads here.
Magic Tree House has all kinds of stuff, including some mini-magazines with tons of facts and other things you’d expect. Downloads here.
Judy Moody also has all kinds of stuff, including how to make your own “I Ate A Shark” shirt that you can download here. Her brother Stink also has a website with a bunch of downloads here.
Pizazz has create-your-own superhero and comic pages, along with some other downloads here.
The Princess in Black released an entire mini-book during the height of the COVID pandemic that you can still download here.
Mouse Scouts, Captain Awesome, and Sophie Mouse used to have official activity pages hosted at some point, but they don’t seem to be available on their official websites anymore. I’ll just put those here:

There’s likely many more not listed here, so check out the publisher’s and author’s websites for your favorite chapter book series. Let me know if you find anything more in the comments or on my contact form!

The Backmatter

Getting back to actual chapter books for a moment, those can also have activity book-type activities in the backmatter. They’re usually reading comprehension activities, which makes sense.

Honorable Mentions: The Not-Chapter Book Ones

I read books that don’t start with chapter too, you know. I think Dork Diaries actually has the most creative of the activity books that I’ve seen.

First of all, How To Dork Your Diary is a canon numerical entry in the series (Book 3 1/2) and has an actual short storyline to make it work. If you haven’t noticed by now, that’s the best thing you can do for any activity book, in my book.

OMG (Book 6 1/2) has different activities for every day of the year, some of them even themed to holidays and other notable days. The best part of this one is there’s two entry slots for each day, so you can record a diary for two whole years and see what’s changed as you go along. It’s not keyed to a specific year either, so you could go out and buy this right now and use it.

Conclusion

This might be the most involved article I’ve written. Who knew there were this many activities based on chapter book series? Well, now you know. I think the most surprising thing about all this, is the series that don’t have activity books. Long-running series like Sophie, Owl Diaries, and Desmond? No books. I wonder who decides on those type of books: the publisher? Probably.

Magic Tree House does have them, for the record, I just haven’t been able to check them out yet, so I left them out above. I prefer to only write about things I’ve actually read when I can help it.

It’s Also The Mousehold’s 2nd Anniversary.

Happy 2nd! Last year, I did a huge top five list that covered a lot of ground. Since I didn’t have quite as much ground to cover this year, I didn’t do anything of that sort. I guess I got burnt out on reading a bit. Reading a chapter book every day for over a year will do that. So something a bit more relaxed this year, but still special. This article was one of the first I considered for the blog, but I didn’t have enough material at the time.

An addendum to that Top 5 article: Marisol Rainey is technically an early middle-grade series, not a chapter book series. I know, I was shocked too. But age group listings don’t lie. It’s still insanely good, so you should read it anyway. Book 4 just came out on Tuesday, you have no excuse.

I was considering doing an author or illustrator interview post, but didn’t get around to it just yet. Maybe you’ll see something along those lines later this year!