The Vine: December 2, 2011
Hi Sars — I’ve enjoyed your site for years and hope to tap into the book knowledge that you and your readers have. I have a 7-year-old son who is a voracious reader. I love that he loves to read, and try to keep him supplied with books, and that is the question — I’m looking for recommendations. These are the books that he has read and enjoyed:
Cam Jansen series
Puppy Place series
Bailey School Mysteries
Box Car Children
A to Z Mysteries
Magic Tree House
Secrets of Droon
Dinosaur Cove
My Weird School Daze
Black Lagoon series
I’ve also bought him all of the Stepping Stones books that I could find — Knights of the Round Table, Swiss Family Robinson, The Time Machine, 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Three Musketeers, Oliver Twist, Last of the Mohicans, Swiss Family Robinson.
He’s also just started the Hardy Boys books, I think they are a little difficult for him but he is reading them and enjoying them.
He has read all of his books numerous times so I don’t begrudge buying him new ones when I can find something for him to read.
One problem is content. Although he reads at a higher level, his maturity level is still 2nd grade. For instance, he read one of the Henry and Ribsy books by Beverly Clearly about a year ago and it was mentioned in the book that “dad is the tooth fairy.” And I’m not opposed to Harry Potter but I’m not sure if might be too mature for him at this point.
If you or any of your readers have any suggestions, I would really appreciate it. They don’t have to be series, I like the series because it makes my life a little easier. I can buy in bulk and he’s occupied for a little while at least.
Going Broke Buying Books But Loving Every Minute Of It
Dear Broke,
First of all, hooray, a question involving kids that’s aggro-free! Hee.
Second of all, hooray, I can recommend a series Skyrockets’s son tore through in about two weeks. (He’d just turned seven at the time; mileage will vary between kids the same age, of course.) It’s by the inaptly named Andy Griffiths, and it starts with a classy tome called The Day My Butt Went Psycho. The titles get even more highbrow from there, obviously (Zombie Butts From Uranus).
You might also try Gnod’s literature map, although entering Griffiths’s name, in addition to popping up Wimpy Kid‘s Jeff Kinney right next to Griffiths, also put Donald Trump near him in the cloud? So those suggestions may need a little curating.
Readers? Stock that kid’s bookshelf. (Three per comment, please. Thanks.)
Tags: Andy Griffiths Ask The Readers Beverly Cleary Jeff Kinney kids popcult
Second the recommendations for Dan Gutman’s baseball player and me books, the Arthur Ransome books, and the Moomin books by Tove Jansson (love these so much I’ve had 2 cats named after characters).
Andrew Clements’ school stories such as Frindle are great.
Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain. His Westmark trilogy is, IMHO, a little darker and can wait a tad.
My son loves cats and started reading the various sextets of “Warriors” books ages ago, and still, at 17 and with very little time for pleasure reading (can you imagine the horror?), uses his own money to get the new ones as they come out. They may be a little too fierce right now, but not in a bit.
Another one that might need to wait just a year or two are Rosemary Sutcliff’s novels of historic Britain, Roman Empire, etc. Some of these can have really dark parts but they are amazing.
I used to go through 2-3 books a week at minimum from age 8 to 12, and I loved Christopher Pike books and Goosebumps series books. They’re horror books, but there’s a ton of them.
I also read all of the Babysitter’s Club… but you know… I’m not a boy. In any case, if it was in my school library, and it was fiction, I read it. My parents also gave me free reign of those newspaper book ordering things my school would pass out regularly. I could buy as many books as I wanted, and I would often buy half a dozen or more.
All of the above are great books. Here are a few others my son loved:
“A Whole ‘Nother Story” series by Cuthbert Soup.
“The Name of This Book is Secret” series by Pseudonymous Bosch.
“The Dark is Rising” series by Susan Cooper. The Cooper series may need another year or two. But by the time he is finished with all the others…
Time Warp Trio series, and My Father’s Dragon series are very cool.
It may or may not help you to know that “The Dark Is Rising by Susan Pooper” is used by certain members of this household to refer to farts.
Somehow I missed a bunch of “newer comments” and hadn’t seen the prior recommendations for Lloyd Alexander before I mentioned it. Have to say it’s good for young girls as well as boys, with a very strong female character!
Interesting to see “Holes” recommended as not too dark for this age. I read it in my late *forties* and felt the whole almost-dying-eating-ancient-canned-peaches stuff was kind of dark and freaky. But my sister the children’s librarian thought I was kind of silly in that regard, so what do I know?
Lucy Sypher’s four books about her childhood memories (kind of like the Little House books but not as dated and without the issues some have referred to above) are good if that genre is appreciated. The first is “Cousins and Circuses.”
@CindyP, glad to see I’m not the only one who found ‘Holes’ disturbing. That, and ‘Tangerine’, were among the major reasons I questioned the sanity of whoever runs the Reading Olympics committee.
I am loving the suggestions for this, and only have one of my own. It might be a little too old for your son at the moment, but I would like to recommend the “Young Wizard” series by Diane Duane. The first book is “So You Want to Be a Wizard” and I think there 8 or so books in the series and the author has been updating them for some of the newer technology (the first book was published in 1983). The main characters are 13 & 11 in the first book and there is some death and dealing with loss in the books but keep them in mind. I forget how old i was when I read them the first time, but I don’t think I was much older than your son.
Good luck! And definitely make use of your local library, they’re always great for things like this. :-)
I recommend the Chrestomanci series and “Howl’s Moving Castle” by Diana Wynne Jones. They are absolutely wonderful books. They’re also full of magic, but I don’t think you should shy away from that. You’ll miss out on many wonderful children’s books if you do.
I also recommend Gerald Morris. I’d start with “The Squire’s Tale”. He write’s absolutely wonderful Arthurian legends for kids.