<p>My youngest liked both Garth Nix & Phillip Pullman.</p>
<p>Dark Materials!</p>
<p>He really liked Eragon? I thought that he was despised even more than Nickleback.</p>
<p>Anything by Natalie Babbit (like Tuck Everlasting) – really high quality children’s lit.</p>
<p>Caddie Woodlawn. And the Little House series, if you must.</p>
<p>There’s a local author around here who wrote really good historical novels for middle schoolers. I forget his name, but the books were The Bread Sister Of Sinking Creek and Maggie Among The Seneca.</p>
<p>When I was in third and fourth grades, I compulsively read the Landmark book series (nonfiction history for kids) – about one a day. That was after reading through the Hardy Boys. From there, I went to James Bond – probably inappropriate, but who cares? – and from them to lots of other spy novels, including, ultimately, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, my first real adult book. Also detective novels, from Doyle to Chesterton to Christie to Hammett and Chandler. And Alastair MacLaine (Ice Station Zebra, The Guns of Navarrone, etc.), Helen MacInnes, Eric Ambler . . . .</p>
<p>Arturo Perez-Reverte’s Spanish historical series Capitan Alatriste (all of which so far has been translated into English) would be great. As, of course, would anything by Alexandre Dumas, pere (The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, Queen Margaret, etc.)</p>
<p>That should hold them until fifth grade or so . . . .</p>
<p>Editing to add: Kids series by Edward Eager (Magic By The Lake, Half Magic, Knight’s Castle), which then makes you want to read Ivanhoe and Robin Hood books. And the similar, older British books by E. Nesbit.</p>
<p>And try Salman Rushdie’s Haroun And The Sea Of Stories, which taught both my kids to be sophisticated readers.</p>
<p>The Dark Is Rising and His Dark Materials share a similar problem: bizarre variation in quality. The last (fifth) book of The Dark Is Rising is so confused as to be unreadable, and there is a huge shift in tone and subject matter between the first and second books and between the third and fourth books. The last book of His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass, is completely out of control, and probably not appropriate for children as young as 9 or 10 (less appropriate than, say, James Bond, because while equally full of s__ it takes itself very seriously).</p>
<p>All Kate D’Camilia…lots of classes read Edward Tulane but Tiger Rising etc are great too.</p>
<p>These mystery series novels will keep them busy–Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot), Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), Robert van Gulik (Judge Dee), Georges Simenon (Maigret). There are lots of volumes in each series. Also, some contemporary mystery writers have started doing young adult books, e.g., Harlan Coben (Shelter) and Carl Hiaasen (Hoot).</p>
<p>Check out the Pendragon series by D.J. MacHale. I believe there are 10 books that are around 400pgs each, so it would keep them busy for a while. It’s an adventure-fantasy series and the main character is a boy. Judging from the books they’ve read, I think this series would interest them!</p>
<p>Look what seems to be still in print!</p>
<p>Choose your own Adventure books!
<a href=“http://www.cyoa.com”>http://www.cyoa.com</a></p>
<p>Has anyone mentioned the Robert Jordan “Wheel of Time” series? 4 of the 5 men in my house keep their own copies of each book. Our bookshelves are all overflowing but, this series has priority!
Our boys started on these in early Middle School.</p>
<p>JHS, love your criticism of The Dark is Rising - especially the difference between 1 and 2. I always thought it was hysterical that a lot of the anti-religion measure got lost on so many people who read His Dark Materials. When my kids were young I often recommended books written before 1960 because they were longer, and had bigger vocabularies. There is one cute Thackeray that was written for kids - The Rose and The Ring. My kids whizzed through the Redwall books really quickly. I remember my son read Nancy Farmer’s The Ear, the Eye and the Arm (400+ pages) in two days - all at school. He was very good at multi-tasking… I really like Jane Langton’s kids books set in Concord - you get to learn a bit about the transcendentalists while enjoying a fantasy set in the US. First one is Diamond in the Window. Edward Eager is a lot of fun too. Love Half Magic. And if you want longer books I highly recommend E. Nesbit - Five Children and it is her most famous fantasy, but I really liked the pair House of Arden and Harding’s Luck that tell a time travel tale from two points of view. Penelope Lively, wrote nice fantasies before she switched to mostly adult lit. Oh and back to E. Nesbit - The Railway Children is a really nice story with no fantasy at all.</p>
<p>There is as bit of romance ( but no sex that I can recall) in To say nothing of the dog by Connie Willis.
A comedic time travel romp.
<a href=“Powell’s Books | The World’s Largest Independent Bookstore”>Powell’s Books | The World’s Largest Independent Bookstore;
<p>Also like the Railway Children & The Magic City, by Nesbit, & Edward Eager.
And Daniel Pinkwater.</p>
<p>Hi - my older son has always been an avid reader. Echoing the Red Wall series and apologies for not reading the entire thread but he loved the Guardians of G’houle, Warriors, and he adored the Deltora Quest series. He reread that series several times. </p>
<p>^I’d forgotten about The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. What a great book!</p>
<p>Mortal Engines series by Philip Reeve. Great opening line: “It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.”</p>
<p>Lots of great suggestions–I especially love The Phantom Tollbooth and Haroun and the Sea of Stories. I read Haroun a couple of years ago, after I finished Salman Rushdie’s autobiography, and I think it’s even better than his adult novels (which I like a lot). He wrote a sequel a couple of years ago, called Luka and the Fire of Life, which I am reading now. The new one would be especially good for kids who like video games.</p>
<p>Other books I liked as a kid: everything by E.L. Konigsburg (books range from appropriate for younger readers to those that are better for teens), everything by Sharon Creech, everything by Lemony Snicket (if he’s read Series of Unfortunate Events, there’s a new spin-off series out now called All the Wrong Questions). The Magic Kingdom for Sale series by Terry Brooks. And of course, The Giver and its sequels, the last of which has only come out recently (there’s also a movie coming out next month).</p>
<p>When I was 9, I was in a pretty unique after school literary club at my elementary school, and we read a bunch of Poe stories, which I liked a lot.</p>
<p>Books I’ve read more recently that I think are great include the Wildwood Chronicles and books by Terry Pratchett. Also, the Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen is really, really cool. It’s one of those books that is not really a children’s book but features a young protagonist. It’s about a mapmaking prodigy who goes on an adventure, and the book is full of all kinds of cool maps and diagrams and illustrations.</p>
<p>If he has any interest in computer science or might in the future, check out Lauren Ipsum (<a href=“http://www.laurenipsum.org/”>http://www.laurenipsum.org/</a>). It’s a neat little book where a girl goes on an adventure through an imaginary world much like that in The Phantom Tollbooth, except it’s designed around concepts in computer science rather than language and math. Very cool.</p>
<p>Also, Wicked is one of my favorites, but I agree that it is not really appropriate for a 9 year old. Lots of sex (an entire section of the book is about an affair), and it’s pretty dark overall.</p>
<p>That said, I was in a school-sponsored book club in 7th grade in which we were regularly reading adult books like the Lovely Bones. 4th grade is still a few years ahead of that, but I’m definitely a big believer in letting kids read whatever they can get their hands on. I started reading the New York Times Magazine fairly regularly at about 10. I liked (and still do) that the feature articles taught me about real things in the world in the style of an in-depth story (I thought most regular news articles were pretty boring then). If I had questions, I could ask my parents or look it up. I recognized that most kids my age weren’t reading this type of thing, but it never occurred to me that I shouldn’t be reading it, and my parents never told me I shouldn’t read something. In contrast, I’ve noticed that my cousin, who is now 18, still has this strange perception that the books she’s supposed to read and buy are only those labeled “young adult” rather than anything and everything. </p>
<p>I remember reading The Tin Drum when I was in 4th or 5th gd.
I was pretty hard up for reading material.
It blew my mind.
Ive never tried to reread it to find out just what the heck was going on.</p>
<p>@JHS we LOVED Half Magic growing up! But the first time through my mom read it to us aloud as there are a few quirky things from it being set in 1920 America. But then we read it over and over from the library.</p>
<p>I would just add that the David Eddings magical/fantasy series was written for adults, but doesn’t have nearly the sexual themes that today’s authors often include. And it’s a little lighter with some humor and likeable characters. Start with Pawn of Prophecy in the Belgariad. </p>
<p>If they haven’t been mentioned, Alan Garner writes very good ‘Tolkein’ type books using folklore etc. Stig of the Dump is also worth a look, though it might be too easy.</p>
<p>I also recommend the Redwall series, Into the Wild series (some violence between cat clans, though), and classics such as Treasure Island. I remember my daughter liked many Penguin Classics’ publications. </p>
<p>If your children will permit it, please continue to read aloud to them, or let them listen to audio books. When they hear a book that is read well, it improves their fluency, expression, and vocabulary (not to mention it helps young readers learn how to pronounce these big, new words). This last year I taught some extraordinarily bright students and I bought them every Stephen Hawking/Lucy Hawking book I could find. They LOVED them. Good introduction to physics. </p>
<p>Please don’t forget nonfiction books. These books take different skills to read well (To understand them they need to read maps, graphs, charts, larger numbers, etc.) I’d recommend all books by Robert E. Wells. Have fun!</p>