Mystery and Magic Await in these Great Boarding School Stories

The Girl With the Glass Bird, by Esme Kerr
If you like boarding school stories focusing on friendship drama (after all, when you’re shut up with your classmates 24/7, drama happens), try The Girl With the Glass Bird, by Esme Kerr. English school girl Edie was thrilled to exchange life with her unsympathetic relations for the exclusive boarding school of Knights Haddon, though the offer has strings attached. She has to agree to befriend Russian royal Anastasia, spoiled and temperamental, and she has to investigate the disappearance of Anastasia’s precious glass bird. To her surprise, Edie becomes Anastasia’s real friend, and this newfound loyalty is tested when the two girls uncover a dangerous plot.

Murder is Bad Manners, by Robin Stevens
For more plucky school girls tackling mysteries, go to Murder is Bad Manners, by Robin Stevens. Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong, best friends at Deepdean School for Girls in the 1930s, dream of being detectives but lack material on which to practice. Then Hazel discovers the corpse of their science teacher. Hazel and Daisy put their sleuthing talents to work, ferreting out clues to the murder while stretching the school rules almost to breaking point. The sequel, Poison is Not Polite, takes the girls to the home of Daisy’s wealthy family. When one of the other house guests falls mysteriously ill, the two girls realize with relish that they have another case to crack…
I enjoy both boarding school stories and time travel stories, and here are two that combine them.

Beswitched, by Kate Saunders
In Beswitched, Flora, a modern English girl, is furious at being sent to boarding school. When she falls asleep on the train, and wakes to find that she’s off to boarding school in 1935, her horror is even greater. Her new roommates have brought her back into the past by experimenting with magic, and now she is stuck with nasty baths, worse food, and an educational regime far stricter than the one she’d been promised. Nor did she think she’d be practicing magic so that she could go home… It’s lots of fun, but also a nice look at how Flora grows from being an unpleasant brat to a likable person.

Charlotte Sometimes, by Penelope Farmer
Charlotte Sometimes is an older classic, and I love it. In 1918, Clare and her little sister Emily go to boarding school. Forty years later, Charlotte arrives at the same school, and sleeps in the same bed that Clare had used. Charlotte wakes after her first night to find herself in Clare’s time, and the girls begin to alternate days in each other’s lives. Having figured out that the bed is at the root of the time travel, the girls are certain that when Clare and Emily move out of the school and become day girls, they’ll settle in their own times—if Clare is the one sleeping in the bed he night of the move. But she isn’t, and now Charlotte is trapped in 1918. Charlotte begins to worry that she will be Clare forever, that she has replaced Emma, her own little sister, with Clare’s Emily, and most frighteningly of all, that she might be in danger of slipping even further back in time…
Time travel is magical, though I don’t think of it as true fantasy magic. These next books, though, beautifully deliver the magical school experience.

Ordinary Magic, by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway
The story of Abby Hale, heroine of Ordinary Magic, is the opposite of Harry Potter’s discovery that he’s a wizard about to set off to a magical boarding school. Abby’s sure the standard test given 12 year olds will show she’s a magic user like all her family. But Abby fails the test—she is ordinary; a despised “ord.” Ords are only valued by questing adventurers—spells that destroy magic users bounce off ords, though other dangers ensure few of them return from questing. Instead of selling Abby to adventurers, like many families do, Abby is sent to a special boarding school—one for ordinary kids that not only educates them, but keeps them safe. Not only are adventurers eager to kidnap them, but supernatural creatures see ords as easy prey, as Abby and her new friends learn to their horror when the defenses of the school are breached. Even though the students aren’t magical themselves, there’s still magical mayhem and danger all around them. It is truly a good read.

The Dungeoneers, by John David Anderson
The Dungeoneers is a great story to add to the reading pile of any kid who dreams of going on fantasy adventures! Colm’s family is starving, so he takes things into his own hands—literally. When’s caught pickpocketing, he’s saved by Finn, a smooth-talking rouge who takes Colm on as his protégée. Finn is a member of the most famous league of treasure-hunting goblin-smiting “dungeoneers” in the land. Colm becomes a student at the league’s headquarters, grouped with three other kids who fill the other requisite roles in a dungeon-diving party as a fighter, mage, and druid. As Colm’s abilities as a rogue grow, he has to learn the hard way who he can really trust. And when he and his cohort find themselves in a real dungeon adventure far above their skill level, they have to learn the hard way how to stay alive…

The Magisterium series, by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare
Fans of Harry Potter will find a familiar read in The Magisterium series, but there are enough twists that the books (The Iron Trial and The Copper Gauntlet are out now) stand in their own right. The series starts with smart-aleck misfit Callum being chosen to attend a special school for magic, run by the Magisterium. Callum didn’t want to be chosen, and his father wants him to fail. But Callum’s gifts can’t be denied, and he makes friends and learns magic despite himself. Then he learns the reason why his father is so opposed to his magic, and it is a dark and terrible secret that leaves Callum questioning what sort of person he will become (and leaves the Magisterium questioning the same thing…). Lots of magic, evil creatures to be fought, and a looming confrontation with a greater evil to come are combined with smaller details of life at a magical boarding school in an underground cavern and the result is gripping reading! The series will ultimately have five books; the third, The Bronze Key, comes out August 30th and I can’t wait.
And finally, here are two series set at schools in space.

Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity, by David Roman
Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity, and its sequel, Re-Entry, are graphic novels about a strange school indeed, where students arrive on space-travelling cat buses, the teachers include a panda, an elf, and a bunny, and where dinosaur-driving is a popular extracurricular. To this school comes Hakata Soy, a lonely boy with a heroic past. One of the downsides of having a heroic past is that the bad guys might want revenge…and so Hakata is unwittingly is followed to Astronaut Academy by trouble. The stories are told from lots of different viewpoints, and it’s absurd, and occasionally bewildering (in a good way). All kids I know who have read the books love them!

Jedi Academy series, by Jeffrey Brown
The books of the Jedi Academy series are not entirely graphic novels, but they are full of illustrations and extra graphics that make them especially friendly for young readers who find dense text blocks unappealing. The first three books in the series (Jedi Academy, Return of the Padawan, and The Phantom Bully), by Jeffrey Brown, chronicle the misadventures and triumphs of Roan, a jedi-in-training, trying to learn to use the force and survive his most unusual middle school. Though Roan has now made it through to graduation, the series continues with A New Class, by Jarrett Krosoczka (of Lunch Lady fame) and a new protagonist, Victor Starspeeder, who’s psyched to be transferring to Jedi Academy (though his big sister isn’t thrilled at all). Victor struggles to stay out of the trouble that keeps finding him anyway, but Yoda believes in his abilities, even when Victor starts to doubt himself, and so does his sister, and in the end, Victor himself knows he has what it takes to be a success!
What boarding school stories has your young reader loved?