厕所帮少年侦探 (Toilet Gang Youth Detectives) by Lin You Ru is a fun Chinese middle grade book mystery series great for primary school kids.
It's not easy to find Chinese books my girls are willing to read, so I'm really excited when I chanced upon this series at the Singapore National Library - 厕所帮少年侦探 (loosely translated as The Toilet Gang Youth Detectives) - that I thought would appeal to them 😊
This series by 林佑儒 Lin You Ru is about a group of primary school students who solve crimes and mysteries involving thefts, missing people and puzzles in their school, so nothing too scary for children.
This is a 10-book series, with two stories/mysteries in each book. I'm usually a little hesitant about reading Chinese mystery stories because deduction in Chinese usually just go over our heads (my girls and my Chinese standards are not very high 😅). But this series is interesting and easy to understand. We are reading the 9th book now. While I didn't find all the mysteries to be intriguing, majority are still good with a few laughs in some of them.
The books are published in China, stories set in Taiwan and I reckon they are meant for the international market, so the prose is suitable for us here in Singapore. There is no hanyu pinyin inside but P5-ers (age 11) and older should be able to tackle this on their own.
If your child is averse to reading Chinese books, I'd suggest reading it together with your child and treat it like a bonding session - it's something I still do with my girls till now 😊
It's quite hard to find Chinese middle grade books we like - sometimes it's because of the plot, writing style and/or the prose (or our not very high Chinese standard😅) - so if you know of any good Chinese MG books, please share them with us in the comments below! I know many parents out there would also love more Chinese MG book recommendations 🤗
Disclaimer: My opinions and reviews here are strictly my and my family’s own.
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