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

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

The Magic Treehouse books were vastly popular.
Beverly Cleary. Baz liked the Ralph books a lot, but then he didn't identify with either Beezus or Ramona.
Encyclopedia Brown books, although the human motivations might be a bit murky.
Garth Nix's elementary series -- seventh tower? Something like that. Very adventurey without being YA. A little scary.
There are some very nice biographies pitched at that age group. I especially remember bios of Frances Marion (Swamp Fox), and Jenner, and there was one about isolating insulin... super cool.
The children's Farley Mowat books -- The Dog Who Wouldn't Be, The Boat That Wouldn't Float, Owls in the Family.
Goosebumps.

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...

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

Elena's been really into Ivy and Bean lately, by Annie Barrows. Also Clementine, by Sara Pennypacker. She's just starting into the American Girl series, and I think she really likes the history in them.

Another which she loooooooved was Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon - Lin did an author visit to our school this year, and E's teacher read this book aloud to her class, but E had to have her own copy and ended up reading ahead on her own. It's all based on Chinese folklore/mythology and is *very* cool.

At the library, we still have lots of kids at that age who are checking out The Boxcar Children and those books.

Amber Brown (another series) - by Paula Danziger, though those seem a bit focused on... how did you put it? the social milieu of school and the inherent conflict therein.

I eagerly await other people's suggestions.

[eeyorerin]

Hm. The American Girl historical fiction books say they have a reading level of third to fourth grade, and there are a lot of them focusing on girls from different historical periods. I enjoyed reading them and I think in terms of content they have what you're looking for.

[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.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I loved, and was recently reminded of, Hitty: Her First Hundred Years.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Oh, I loved those. Not having a kid-excuse when I discovered them, I read most of them sitting on the floor of a bookstore.

[eeyorerin]

Oh, and Paddington Bear, goofy and just good fun, although I remember being very confused by what jellied eels actually were.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Ooooh. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon looks great!

Paula Danziger! Oh my gosh. Do you remember how often we read and reread her teen books when we were kids?

Has Elena read the Toys books I linked above? They are really, really clever and funny, and have more emotional depth than you might expect.

Alex also likes Judy Blume's The Pain and the Great One books, if you think Elena might like those.

[marici.livejournal.com]

Sounds a bit early yet, but by the end of the year, bet she's ready to go horse-mad.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I am not familiar with the Toys books (translation: my library does not own them), so I just requested one to see if she likes it! :)

[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.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes!

[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.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

When I was in first grade and reading a LOT, I started reading the Trixie Belden series. I don’t know how available it is now, though. Even though the kids were all teenagers, Trixie was only 13 and there was not much about dating or any of that.

[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.

[rhymeswithtruculent.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

She would probably really enjoy Joan Aiken's series about Arabel (a young girl, probably 5 or 6) and her pet raven, Mortimer, who live in a suburb of London. They're wonderfully funny books, and though for a while they were out of print in the US, I've seen a couple of the titles in stock at B&N. And of course, your local library ought to have them.

Titles: Arabel and Mortimer; Arabel's Raven; Mortimer Says Nothing; Mortimer's Cross.

All short stories, and it doesn't really matter in which order you read them, though Arabel and Mortimer is the first, and explains Mortimer's entrance into the family.

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Desperaux! Because of Winn-Dixie has bigger-kid themes, but Desperaux was totally charming. We also enjoy the Mercy Watson books, all by Kate de Camillo.

[cliosfolly.livejournal.com]

Also by the Paddington Bear author, Michael Bond, are the Olga da Polga books--about a guinea pig story-teller and the other animals inhabiting her backyard. They've been enduring favorites of mine.

At seven, I encountered Little House in the Big Woods and loved it so much it became the first book I ever bought with my own money. It think it would be accessible given Alex's reading level and interests, though subsequent books deal with Native Americans in problematic ways.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

When I was about that age, I read the Black Stallion books. They're rather dated in some ways, since they were written in the 40s, and may be too complex for her now, but if she's horse mad, she might enjoy them.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a great Roald Dahl book. It was one I made my mom read over and over while I read along.

I second the Beverly Cleary books. Those were my first chapter books. There are a few bits of playground stuff, but quite young and Ramona doesn't understand it, so for me, it was a good way to get a glimpse of how those things worked.

For non-fiction, you might take a look at some of the DK Eyewitness series. They have lots of pictures and are designed for children. The range is quite wide, from important people to time periods to topics (animals, trains, etc). Even as an adult, I turn to them for a quick overview of a topic. The clean layout and decent scholarship make them a good choice, in my librarianly opinion. Depending on the topic, they may be too hard for her, but I suspect some would not be. They're rated at 7-9 years, which sounds about what she is reading at? (If not emotionally.) My Borders has a huge selection of them. They also include discs with clip art.

[naomikritzer]

Oh, yeah. Definitely don't pass these up on the grounds that they're marketing for overpriced dolls -- they are, but they're also really excellent books.

[naomikritzer]

Some that Molly enjoyed at this stage:

* The Beezus and Ramona books by Beverly Cleary
* Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and its sequels (she's added several since I was a kid) by Judy Bloom
* The Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books
* The Great Brain series (set in Utah in the late 1800s, this is historical fiction about the unfortunately gullible younger brother of a born con man)

And a short time later:
* The Anastasia Krupnik series by Lois Lowry. (Though beware: Anastasia At This Address runs a plot that was probably purely humorous in the 1980s and reads a lot creepier now.)
* The Babysitter's Club. (My sister joked that at least she was getting this phase out of the way early.)
* Nancy Drew (actually, check for these now; there are now younger-kid versions of Nancy Drew that are mysteries written at a somewhat simpler level).

[torontoteacher.livejournal.com]

One blog which you may find helpful is The Diamond in the Window. She has daughters and reviews a lot of books. I've taken a lot of notes there.

I also wouldn't discount the picture books yet. The so called "advanced" picture book section at our library has a lot of longer books that are still keeping my Bigger Dude interested.

As for series? Anything by Kate DiCamillio (starting with Desperaux), there's a fair amount by Jane Yolen that might suit, and my kid developed an unnatural love for "Sam, Dog Detective" and Bunnicula just a few months ago.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I may be way out of line in terms of themes and difficulty, or even if the books are still available, but here are some books I remember liking.

The Borrowers

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle

Winnie the Pooh, House at Pooh Corner, and two associated poetry collections ("James James / Morrison Morrison / Weatherby George Dupree / took great / care of his mother, / though he was only three. / James James said to his mother, / 'Mother,' he said, said he; / 'You must never go down / to the end of the town / if you don't go down with me.'")

Curious George, although that may have some problematic themes and be too easy

Journey for Tobiyah: The Dramatic Adventures of a Slave Boy From Ancient Israel, which I vaguely recall being something of a mystery story, although something else tells me I'm conflating it with another book whose name I cannot remember. I think I still have it on my shelf, though, so I should look at it.

Cherry Ames and Sue Barton, Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew (but probably not at age 5)

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes! ALL the Bunnicula books.

[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.