The Magic Club Middle Grade Series

The Magic Club Book Series

As a teacher in Los Angeles, I’ve spent a lot of time in libraries looking for books that will engage young urban readers. Most recently, I stood in a school library with Jahcoby, an 8th grader reading at a 4th grade level. We spun around the shelves trying to find a book that would engage him, a book he could read, a book in which he could see himself and his community. We did not find a book for him that day. The Magic Club series is conceived with this problem in mind. The stories are meant to reflect the magic in our diverse community and show the kids winning. 

Currently, our school libraries and classrooms have too few books with characters from communities of color or urban settings. It will be exciting to one day walk into classrooms and libraries and see collections that are made up of books with young characters set in urban communities. It will be exciting to see collections of books that show our urban youth in their joy, in the future, experiencing magic and every other mundane thing. The Magic Club books will be a part of these future collections. 

 The Magic Club stories are told from the perspective of a group of urban friends; Jonny, Etta, Ish, Destiny and Jazzy  who live in the same apartment building in mid-city Los Angeles. They are from different backgrounds; three of them are mixed-race, one identifies as non-binary. The families include two single mothers raising kids together, a boy being raised by his aunt and uncle, and a parent pair in which the father is in a same-sex relationship. Having been a teacher and parent for many years, I know that these family structures are far from rare in life, but hard to find in kids literature.

The Magic Club #1 is a 47,000 word fun magical comic adventure in which our unconventional family of big-city kids tells the story of how they use magic to save their home from the encroaching “evil” landlord and his goons. When the group of friends come home to a notice that Mr. Bougee has bought their building, they know they have to stop him. Bougee has already bought up half the city, putting up luxury complexes with “No Trespassing” signs and his name in huge blinking lights. This will mean the end of their “Magic Club”; apartments have become too expensive, they may have to leave the city, they may even become homeless. During a Magic Master ceremony up on the roof, the kids catch Bougee’s taser-toting “goons” putting rats down the vents and Etta finds a bottle of swirling potion. It falls onto their rings and suddenly Jonny can understand the squawking of the blackbird and the squeaking of the rats. Time stops when Destiny yells, “Stop!” as a taser almost touches little Jazzy. One by one the friends discover their unique magic power. With their newfound powers, they stop Bougee’s goons and uncover his bribery schemes and illegal money laundering operation hidden in the tunnels under the city.

The Magic Club #2 is a manuscript in progress in which The Magic Club gang enter a mystical world through a mirror they find on the roof. The adventures and creatures they encounter on the other side of the mirror cause each one of them to confront their weaknesses and fears and emerge triumphant.