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

[geminigirl]

All of a Kind Family
Ballet Shoes (and the other books in the series)
The Littles
The Borrowers
Anything by Carolyn Haywood-these were my favorites when I was around Alex's age, and I remember the school librarian giving me special permission to go into the big kids section to get them.
My other favorite at around that age were the Bobbsey Twins.
Encyclopedia Brown

Cherry Ames (may be a little old for Alex because the series starts when Cherry is 18, but I don't recall anything in the content that stuck out as inappropriate.)

Trixie Belden

I read a lot of Beverly Cleary-Ramona, Henry Huggins, Ellen Tebbits...

Some Judy Blume-there's a lot that's on Alex's reading level that's not necessarily age appropriate for her, but a lot that she could probably read and enjoy.

Mrs. PiggleWiggle

The Cricket in Times Square

Mr. Poppers Penguins

Harriet the Spy (maybe-I can't remember it well enough to know whether the content is appropriate, but I know the reading level is)

I liked E.L. Konigsburg's books (From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, etc) but I think the content of most of them is too much for Alex on her own, though the stories are good-they might be read alouds so you could talk through them.

I think Scott O'Dell (Island of the Blue Dolphins) is probably similar-on the right reading level but not okay for solo reading, and possibly even too much for read alouds right now.

Also in the category of "probably on Alex's reading level but potentially not appropriate content yet"-Lois Lowry may have some books and Louis Sachar's Wayside School series might be okay.


I can't remember when I read the Cam Jansen books or the Amelia Bedelia books...those may be below Alex's reading level right now. They were fun though.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Harriet the Spy is a great book for an independent introverted girl -- but a big part of the plot is school bullying. I also found the class issues confusing and alienating when I first read it (although of course I didn't have those words for it).

I see that Mr Popper's Penguins is going to be a movie. So if the book hasn't always been in print, I bet it will be this year!

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

E.L. Konigsburg is a mixed bag. I loved many of her books, but the best ones seem to be for older kids than Alex. B'nai Bagels is age appropriate, but I always thought it was stupid. When I was 9 or 10, I fell in love with Mixed-Up Files, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth (and she has a new book that seems oddly similar in some ways, that's either not as good, or failing to work for me because it's aimed at 12-13 y.o. boys and I'm not one. That's The Mysterious Edge of The Heroic World.)

She might like A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver. Come to think of it, she would almost certainly like it. I discovered it at 10, but could have appreciated it younger.