Heidi Heckelbeck feels a bit like a younger Sabrina the Teenage Witch. She’s quirky, a little mischievous and there’s never a dull day when she’s around. Oh, and she’s a witch.
If your child has been reading Heidi Heckelbeck, these are the five books I’d line up next. Princess Mirror-Belle, Catalina Incognito, Zoey and Sassafras, the Magical Animal Adoption Agency and The Dragon in the Library all have a bit of magic in them that the grown-ups don’t know about.
They’re filed at age 6 or 7 in the app, and our magic books for 6 year olds shelf has more like them.
What’s in a Heidi Heckelbeck book
Heidi has always done school at home with her mum. In the first book she starts second grade at Brewster Elementary, and a girl called Melanie holds her nose and announces that something smells. Then Melanie gets Heidi a part in the school play, as a scary apple tree.
Right at the end you find out Heidi’s secret, a sparkly box under her bed with an old book in it. The second book says it outright. She’s a witch, like her mum and her Aunt Trudy, and that old book is her Book of Spells.
In Heidi Heckelbeck Casts a Spell she wants a spell to make Melanie forget her lines, and the ingredients include three cornflakes and a puppy tooth. So the books that work next are funny school stories where a child has a magic secret and has to decide what to do with it.
We have eighteen Heidi Heckelbeck books, and they’re all on the Wanda Coven page.
Five books like Heidi Heckelbeck
Princess Mirror-Belle by Julia Donaldson
Princess Mirror-Belle
Ellen is off school with chicken pox and goes to look at her spots in the bathroom mirror. Her reflection dodges to one side, tells her not to scratch or she’ll turn into a toad, and climbs out.
The girl looks exactly like Ellen, only everything’s the wrong way round. She says she’s a princess who has just woken up from a two-hundred-year sleep, and every question Ellen asks gets a bigger fib in reply.
Her cure for what she calls dragon pox uses most of a bottle of bubble bath, Dad’s shaving cream and a lot of Mum’s best perfume. Ellen gets the blame. There are three stories in the book and they all go the same way, with Mirror-Belle slipping back into a mirror and Ellen left to explain.
Mum decides Mirror-Belle is an imaginary friend, so Ellen is left keeping the secret on her own. It’s filed at 7, and Princess Mirror-Belle and the Party Hoppers comes next.
Catalina Incognito by Jennifer Torres
Catalina Incognito
Catalina arranges her books by colour and her clothes in alphabetical order, and she would very much like her family to stop calling her Kitty-Cat. For her birthday, her great-aunt gives her a tatty velvet sewing pouch. Tía Abuela is a retired telenovela star who always played the villain.
Then Tía Abuela sews two kitten ears onto Catalina’s grey hoodie. Catalina puts it on and walks home, and her own mum shoos her off the porch like a stray cat. The sewing kit is magic.
The next day a ruby goes missing from Tía Abuela’s famous Dragon Dress, right at the opening of the library’s new children’s room. Catalina investigates as a sleek grey cat and gets chased round the library by a kind librarian with a pet carrier.
Spanish words come up all the way through, usually with the meaning close by. It’s filed at 7, and The New Friend Fix is the next one.
Zoey and Sassafras: Dragons and Marshmallows by Asia Citro
Zoey and Sassafras 1 – Dragons and Marshmallows
Zoey finds a photo her mum has hidden of herself as a little girl, with a glowing purple frog on her head. It turns out Mum has been looking after magical animals in their old barn since she was Zoey’s age. Dad can’t see any of it, and Zoey can.
When Mum goes away for a week, Zoey answers the barn doorbell and finds a small, sad baby dragon who coughs sparks. She works out what’s wrong with him by running a proper experiment, with plates of food lined up in a row. He goes straight for the marshmallows and toasts them first.
There are pictures all the way through and a little glossary at the back. In the middle Zoey thinks she’s made him poorly and can’t reach Mum, and she cries, but it doesn’t last long. It’s filed at 6 and we have eight Zoey and Sassafras books.
Magical Animal Adoption Agency: Clover’s Luck by Kallie George
Magical Animal Adoption Agency – Clover’s Luck
Clover is sure she’s the unluckiest girl alive. She carries a wishbone in her pocket, and her new canary has just flown out through a broken window. Chasing it takes her into the Woods that everyone at school sings a rhyme about, where a notice on a tree asks for volunteers at an animal adoption agency.
My favourite part is Clover walking along the tanks and stalls and reading the cards. There’s a toad under a curse whose warts change colour, five fairy horses no bigger than her fingernail and a baby dragon called Snort, who sets fire to things when he sneezes.
Most of the animals have been neglected or given up by their owners. One small unicorn had his horn filed down by a princess who thought it looked smarter. Nothing cruel happens on the page, but a child who feels strongly about animals may go quiet there. It’s filed at 6, and Clover goes back in The Missing Magic.
The Dragon in the Library by Louie Stowell
The Dragon in the Library
Kit would much rather climb trees in the old cemetery than sit in a library. Then Faith, the head librarian, hands her a dusty book about dangerous animals, and one page later Kit is standing in a desert with a black mamba about to strike.
That’s how she finds out she’s a wizard, years before wizard powers are meant to turn up. Under the library there’s a forest where the trees grow pages, and a puppy-sized creature called Dogon, half dog and half dragon, who breathes fire at visitors. Kit’s wizard training turns out to be mostly shelving books.
It’s filed at 7 and it’s a bit longer than a Heidi book, so it suits a child who has raced through those. The story carries on in The Monster in the Lake.
Four more for a Heidi Heckelbeck fan
Ivy & Bean and the Ghost That Had to Go isn’t a magic book, though there’s a ghost-hunting potion in it, and it’s the same kind of school trouble. Ivy says she can see a ghost in the girls’ toilets to get out of doing cartwheels at lunch, and by the next day nobody in the school will go near the door. The first Ivy & Bean book is in the library too.
In Sylva and the Fairy Ball, the first Fairy Bell Sisters book, Tinker Bell’s little sister turns eight one day too late for the Fairy Ball. She stays up all night decorating her big sisters’ gowns with sea glass, and it goes about as well as you’d expect.
Amelia Fang and the Barbaric Ball is the first Amelia Fang book, filed at 7. Amelia is a young vampire whose pet pumpkin is taken by a very spoilt prince, and in her world it’s unicorns and glitter that are terrifying.
For a gentler one with animals instead of magic, we have five Critter Club books, filed at 5. In Marion Takes a Break, Marion sprains her ankle two weeks before the horse show and has to watch her little sister enter without her.
If it’s the magic or the school they love
For more half-fairy, half-vampire magic, there’s books like Isadora Moon. For funny school stories without the spells, there’s books like Junie B. Jones, and both are for the same age.
Just so you know…
Every book on this page is in Little Reads, a children’s library app with 3,000+ hand-picked books. They’re in the full library, which is £7.99 a month after a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime.
A free account comes with 100+ free books, if you’d like a look round first.