Mystery Books for 2nd Graders

Dr Can Do has built the grandest windmill the town has ever seen - but when morning comes, the sails lie smashed across the lawn! There’s no wind, no storm, no clouds in the sky, so who could have wrecked it? As Doc and Jill rebuild plank by plank, a strange howl rises in the night and the sails begin to spin. Will Doc catch the sneaky culprit in the act? This decodable reader practises the ‘ow’ sound in words like ‘frown,’ ‘growl,’ ‘howl,’ and ‘brown.’

Wanjikũ is the cleverest girl in her village, so why does the handsome stranger she marries only ever visit at dusk, always eating with his back turned? When the path to his home grows darker and the trees grow thicker, what will she find waiting inside? Can her little brother’s warning save her before it’s too late? This Bookbot Level S2 story practises two-syllable words with suffixes, like ‘stranger’, ‘monster’, ‘firmly’, and ‘bravely’.

Zom’s pumpkins are the biggest, plumpest crop he’s ever grown, and he’s already dreaming of the delicious cakes he’ll bake. But when one pumpkin vanishes overnight without a single footprint left behind, his suspicion grows. Who - or what - is sneaking through the patch after dark? Can Zom and Skel stake out the garden and catch the mysterious thief before every last pumpkin disappears? This decodable reader practises ci/si/ti making /sh/ in words such as ‘attention,’ ‘delicious,’ ‘suspicion,’ and ‘determination.’

The maize is dead, the goats grow thin, and the river has shrunk to the width of a child’s arm. When the rains fail and the whole village falls into ‘chaos’, who will find the answer everyone has walked past for years? A ten year old girl named Lwazi listens to the wise old Nozipho and begins to wonder about a forgotten well and the water that might still lie at the bottom. Can a village ‘create’ hope from what it already has? This Bookbot level practises two syllable words split between two vowels, as in ‘quiet’, ’trio’, and ’triumph’.