Looking for children's book recommendations.

[rivka]

I know that there are some parents of early readers on my friends list (naomikritzer, wiredferret, kcobweb...) and also some librarians. And of course probably most of the people who read my LJ were early and omnivorous readers yourselves. I'm looking for some suggestions.

Alex's reading has taken off in a big way recently. (Most frequent phrase out of our mouths these days: "Put down the book and [wash your hands for dinner/brush your teeth/put your coat on/eat your lunch/etc. etc. etc.]")

She's got her own children's-easy-series books that she's tearing through independently and in a hurry: Magic Tree House, Disney Fairies, Secrets of Droon, et cetera. But she's also now capable of reading what I think of as "regular" chapter books: books which are just there to tell stories, instead of being explicitly constructed to have a limited vocabulary, simple sentence structures, and lots of repetition. For example, Toys Go Out and Toy Dance Party are current hits (and much recommended).

Here are the characteristics I'm looking for:

• Good books of reasonable literary quality, at roughly a middle-elementary reading level. Toys Go Out is rated at a fourth-grade reading level, and it seemed to be about right. Something she might need a bit of help with is fine.


• Either fiction or nonfiction is good. Alex particularly loves history.


• Content appropriate for a five- or six-year-old. This means, on the one hand, an absence of long elevated descriptive passages, and on the other hand, an absence of socially realistic depictions of child abuse, romance as a main theme, scary violence, etc.


• Not excessively focused on social conflicts between kids and the social milieu of school. Alex might read like an eight-year-old, but she is squarely five on a social level, and she just doesn't get books that focus on girls being catty to each other and school playground dynamics. Which a lot of contemporary books at this level seem to do.

Thanks for any suggestions you can give me! Books which aren't Important Children's Classics are particularly welcome, because I've already gotten a bunch of suggestions from lists that focus on that type of thing.

Edited to add an additional characteristic I'm looking for: Because Alex is a fairly new reader, I want to avoid heavy use of dialect ("Hit's an 'orse, guvnor!") and weird language use for now. We can deal with that sort of thing in read-alouds, though.

Also edited to compile a list of particularly likely suggestions:
Farley Mowatt: Owls in the Family, The Dog Who Wouldn't Be
Ransome: Swallows and Amazons
Grace Lin: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
American Girls series
Joan Aiken: Arabel and Mortimer
Kate Di Camillo: The Tale of Despereaux
Michael Bond: Paddington Bear
Bunnicula
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle
Encyclopedia Brown
Clyde Robert Bulla historical fiction
Astrid Lindgren: Children of Noisy Village
Mordecai Richler: Jacob Two Two

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It's a little hard to remember because it was such a fast transition. We really only had like 6 months before the only limiting factor became contextual knowledge, and not reading level. Not that that isn't its own problem...

We may soon be in the same boat. It's kind of hard to believe that in June she was painstakingly working her way through Are You My Mother and Green Eggs and Ham. I was not expecting the trajectory to be quite so steep.

Thanks for the recommendations. I bet Farley Mowatt would go over great. Were those biographies from a particular series?

And isn't Encyclopedia Brown a little... quaint? I remember those books already being old-fashioned when I was a kid, and not necessarily in the "timeless" sort of way. But I'm going off of old memories.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

I have a copy of Farley Mowat's fiction adventure Lost in the Barrens (aka Two Against The North) waiting for the next collection to send Duncan, and I'm keeping an eye out for the ones mentioned, too. Our son also liked a Gerald Durrell story Rosy is my Relative.

The problem about Alex's sentence-comprehension skill being well ahead of emotional age is not going to go away (which is good, in a way!) I think that's actually a reason that I (and maybe other kids) read so much science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction - because in a different culture, those comparisons aren't so obvious, and the issues the older kid heroes are dealing with are sometimes less disturbing or expressed in less disturbing ways than in contemporary fiction.

Swallows and Amazons - intrepid kids who play pretending games and have gentle serious adventures messing about in boats. Twelve books and a lot of fanfic.

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

I loved Lost in the Barrens, but suspect it's a little too terrifying for a 5 yo.

Two kids! Alone! All winter! No adults!

At age 8, it's aces, though. Goes with Naya Nuki: The Shoshone Girl Who Ran and a whole bunch of other semi-fictional Native American biographies. fairoriana could tell you more.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

I should have followed that thought and written the rest of it out. I didn't send 5yo Duncan Lost in the Barrens as part of the Christmas parcel this year, but I plan to next year, for reasons as you mention. Also, at this point Duncan isn't an independent reader, so he gets all his chapter books with a parental arm around him, and I think that probably means more help with the scary bits than he'd need when he becomes an independent reader.

[ailbhe]

Swallows and Amazons is what I'm going to give to Linnea next, when I find them. I know they're here in the house somewhere.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I've never read any of the Swallows and Amazons books, so thanks for the reminder. I'm aware that these books are a Thing, but they never come to mind since I didn't read them myself. We have the first one so I will give it a check for reading level.

I agree that SF/F and historical fiction are probably good the right directions to go.

[timill]

Twelve books and a lot of fanfic.

Thirteen, with Coots in the North and other stories.

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I was surprised too, and then I thought about the year I learned to read, and it's like a rocket.

Sadly, I don't remember what biography series they were. I got them from the library, so I don't still have them.

Encyclopedia Brown is quaint and old-fashioned, but this did not appear to be detrimental. I think the draw was that they were short, and rewarded very close reading.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I had some of the Childhood of Famous Americans books when I was a kid. I thought about getting their bio of George Washington for Alex, because she loves him, but then I Amazon Previewed and found passages where a wayward young slave boy provides comic relief and decided to give it a pass.

We have the first Encyclopedia Brown book somewhere. I'll try it out.

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

Oops, should have read this before I made my comment further down!

[jenett]

My nieces, who are 6 and 8, totally adore Encyclopedia Brown. Yes, it's totally quaint, but in a way they really like. (They also really like working out the puzzles.)