Pals in Peril Books in Order

The Pals in Peril books are wild, affectionate spoofs of old-school children's adventure series, but they are also real adventures in their own right. The main trio is Lily Gefelty, who starts as the most ordinary and grounded of the group, Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, and Katie Mulligan, a fearless action-hero type. Put them together and even the silliest premise gets a sturdy emotional center.

It starts with Whales on Stilts!, which tells you almost everything you need to know about the tone. There are laser-eyed whales, evil geniuses, impossible contraptions, and jokes on nearly every page. Underneath the parody, though, Anderson is writing about brave kids who keep choosing to help one another when adults are useless, clueless, or actively trying to wreck the world.

These books move fast.

Each installment throws the trio into a new corner of genre chaos. One book plays with mountain-lodge mysteries and missing children. Another turns Delaware into a forbidden fantasy realm full of lost cities, spies, gangsters, and the lingering Curse of the Jaguar. Later books bring haunted tourist towns, zombie worries, secret police, and eventually a full sci-fi trip into space.

Lily is often the key to why the series works so well. Even when Jasper has gadgets and Katie has experience punching monsters, Lily is usually the one who notices what matters and keeps the story from floating away into pure nonsense. The books are gleefully absurd, but the friendships feel solid, and the danger, while funny, is still treated as danger.

Readers who grew up on Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, pulp sci-fi, or strange old library books will catch a lot of the jokes. Readers who did not grow up on any of that will still get the fun. The villains are gloriously overcooked, the narration keeps winking at the formula, and the action never really lets up.

It is both a parody and a love letter.

If you want middle grade books that are smart, chaotic, and genuinely funny, Pals in Peril is one of Anderson's happiest series. It invites readers to laugh at genre clichés, then reminds them why those stories were exciting in the first place.