Moonleapers by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Read: July 2025
Rating: 4.25 stars
Format: ebook

Starting out, I have to say that I am a huge fan of Margaret Peterson Haddix. I discovered her years ago, when Running out of Time came out, and have read most of her books since! The current summer reading for our incoming 7th graders is Among the Hidden, which is a favorite!

All that said, I adored Moonleapers! What started out a little slow picked up by chapter three and had me hooked. Hooked like stayed up until 2am to finish reading!

In Moonleapers, we meet Maisie's family - her sister Dora, brother Rufus, mom, dad, and the crux of the story, Great Aunt Hazel (whom Rufus refers to as Terrible Aunt Hazel.) At the start of the story, Maisie is thrilled to finally get her first cell phone, because, you know, being 12 without a cell phone is the worst thing to a tween. The caveat is that it's Great Aunt Hazel's old cell phone, since she is in a nursing home and no longer needs it. The catch? The whole family is moving into Great Aunt Hazel's house for the summer, to care for her while she's in the nursing home. And Maisie is NOT happy about that.

Throughout the story, we learn more about Maisie's mom (cybersecurity expert) and her dad (some sort of fairly-secretive traveling job) and how Maisie kind of resents her parents for always requiring her to watch her siblings. That's another annoyance for Maisie, the first being the fact that she just can't understand why her parents sign her up for all these weird extra classes - Morse Code, Logic, Greek, Latin, and other classes that are an absolute waste of time in the tween world.

Then Maisie meets Cat the Great and Little Dog, Great Aunt Hazel's rather special pets. And she starts getting strange texts on her phone. And there is some strange obsession with Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat in the Fiddle. And then there's Aunt Hazel's strange, uber bland neighborhood, that's a gated community where every single house is the exact same. And the weird, secret-service like agents who watch Great Aunt Hazel's room. And then there's Great Aunt Hazel's deceased brother Gilbert. And Ainsley-from-the-future. And why is Mom being so weird?

All of this comes together in an adventure filled read that is perfect for middle grades. Readers will enjoy Haddix's engaging writing style that draws you in by the end of chapter three. They will root for Maisie to solve the riddles that keep showing up on her phone. They will want to snuggle with Cat the Great and play with Little Dog. They will want to beg Haddix to release the sequel as soon as possible so they can go on another Maise the Moonleaper adventure!

Or, at least, I can't wait for the next adventure!