The Rescue Princesses 3 – The Moonlit Mystery

Paula Harrison's The Moonlit Mystery is a Rescue Princesses adventure for 7 year olds about a princess who would MUCH rather climb trees than learn to sit nicely on a chair.

What happens

Princess Lulu lives in the palace of Undala, with golden grasslands and wild animals right outside the wall. She's waited six whole weeks to see a lioness's new cubs come out of their den. When they finally do, there are five of them!

By sunset the den is empty. The ranger says zebras and leopards have been going missing too. Only one tiny cub is left, hiding behind a rock, so Lulu smuggles him home and calls him Tufty.

That's when she presses the yellow jewel on her ring and calls the other Rescue Princesses. Emily, Clarabel and Jaminta all promise to come as fast as they can. (Explaining that to her parents is another matter.)

There's a price, of course. Her friends can come if Lulu promises to be nicer to Prince Olaf, a visiting know-it-all who keeps offering to hold her hand on her own gym beam. And she has to take etiquette lessons.

Lulu is SO much fun to follow. She cartwheels along branches, rushes everywhere and can't keep still for a second. Her first lesson with Madame Rez is a real treat. It's an hour of learning how to sit down, and it ends with a whiskery face pressed against the window and Madame Rez fleeing from a "wild beast".

Who wouldn't want a lion cub hiding in their bedroom? Tufty escapes, chases flies across the duvet and at one point hides under Lulu's long frilly skirt while her aunt asks what they're all up to.

Then the mystery properly gets going. A light flickers by the gardener's shed at night, there's a hidden door in the ground, and something underneath it roars. The funniest bit is when Olaf catches them in the kitchen and Lulu has to pretend Tufty's baby bottle is hers (she drinks the milk to prove it).

The night-time sneaking does lead somewhere a bit sadder. The girls follow a tunnel and find the missing lions shut in a small cage. The princesses are furious on the lions' behalf, and a very animal-loving reader will be too.

It's the third Rescue Princesses book and an earlier rescue with a dolphin gets a mention, but everything your reader needs is explained as they go.

What to read next

If they'd like to stay with the same four friends, The Stolen Crystals takes them to Jaminta's kingdom by the Silver River, where a baby panda lives up on the mountain and some famous jewels vanished years ago.