The Big Cheese: Geronimo Stilton

Papercutz, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing for tweens 8-14, launched in the Spring of 2005 with the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew graphic novels is now coming out with graphic novels of Geronimo Stilton. These can be hardbound, but they are not library bound as of yet. There are three of these available: #1, the Discovery of America; #2 the Secret of the Sphinx, and #3 the Coliseum Con. If you are not sure you are interested, checkout this preview of the Secret of the Sphinx. By the way Spotlight is still publishing some of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew in library editions, but they do not have all produced by Papercutz.

The original Geronimo Stilton books are chapter books. Attack of the Bandit Cats has a Lexile score of 570L. You can search for the score for each book. They were originally published in Italy and have been translated into 35 languages. In 2004 they finally became available in the United States. Each book is a fast, good read and is an excellent crossover adventure book for students ready to jump from graphic novels to chapter books. Many pages have a comic on it making the book feel familiar to those not yet used to reading chapter books. Geronimo Stilton is the main character who is the editor of a newspaper and time traveler who has to keep his arch enemy (a cat of course) from changing history. Bound to Stay bound has 35 volumes of Geronimo Stilton books available. It's best to get these in library bound (BSTB) as these books will be taking a lot of wear and tear. Read some chapters aloud and the books will fly off the shelves. There are many cheese jokes in these so a cheese tasting would be a great introduction.

In Italy the classic tales such as Robin Hood are included in the collection. However, they have not yet been translated into English as of this date.