We are finishing Charlotte’s Web and I need another book they’ll both like.
Recent books we’ve read and they enjoyed: The Wild Robot series, The BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Books we’ve tried but switched to something else for various reasons: The Hobbit (too wordy, not enough action right away), The Princess Bride (should have picked an abridged version).
by WasAHamster
12 Comments
Seems like you should just complete the Roald Dahl pantheon.
After that, start the His Dark Materials trilogy with The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman.
ETA: anything by EB White
It’s so sweet that you all read together. I’d recommend: Three Tales of my Father’s Dragon, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Dragons in a Bag, & The Tower at the End of Time. Happy reading 🙂
Owls in the Family, the Ramona Quimby books, the Wingfeather Saga, Escape From Mr Lemoncello’s Library, The Princess and Curdie
The Squire’s Tale by Gerald Morris. (I started reading it to a 10 year old, but I got all the kids’ attention within the first chapter)
The Secret Garden
We just finished Swallows and Amazons and my kids loved it.
The joke is that _The Princess Bride_ *is* the abridged version.
Anyway, Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain might be good, but it might be a bit too scary. First book is _The Book of Three_. Don’t measure it by the Disney movie _The Black Cauldron_, that was an abominable adaptation.
Anne McCaffrey wrote a side series to the Dragonriders of Pern specifically for younger readers, the Harper Hall series. First book is _Dragonsong_.
There’s a series of storybooks illustrated by Friso Henstra, mostly written by Jay Thompson. _The Practical Princess_ stands out the most, but there’s also _Stupid Marco_, _The Silver Whistle_, and _The Round Sultan and the Straight Answer_. The illustrations always reminded me of the movie _Yellow Submarine_ as a kid.
I’m an old-fashioned sort of fellow, so I can’t help suggesting the Beatrix Potter books. They have that classic dry British wit at times, and I had a record of _The Tailor of Gloucester_ and _The Pie and the Patty-Pan_ as a kid.
Bunnicula
The Hoboken Chicken Emergency by Daniel Pinkwater. Kid goes out on Thanksgiving to buy a turkey, comes home with a 267-pound, five-foot-tall chicken named Henrietta. Hilarity ensues.
Beverly Cleary. The best.
The Wayside School books by Louis Sachar are great for that age
>The Princess Bride (should have picked an abridged version).
That *is* the abridged version! LOL.
*The Pushcart War* by Jean Merrill
*The Phantom Tollbooth* by Norton Justor
*Where’s Wallace?* by Hillary Knight. There’s a 6.5 year difference between me and my youngest sibling and we ALL loved this book for years. Wallace is an orangutan in a zoo. When he runs away, there is a two-page gloriously chaotic panoramic illustration of the place he’s run away to and everyone at the zoo looking for Wallace. Can you find him, and the other characters in every illustration?
*First Test* by Tamora Pierce. This is the first book in the Protector of the Small subseries in her overall Tortall series.
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede
*Molly on the Moon* by Mary Robinette Kowal. Reading level may be a bit low for them.
*The Velveteen Rabbit* by Margery Williams
The Narnia series, but i insist you read it in order of publication, not chronologically. 😀
The Mortimer and Arabel books are funny, and if you like you can make them funnier by reading the dialogue in a English accent (unless you are English, then by all means, just read it as you normally would).
The Phantom Tollbooth, but there are some times you’ll have to explain homophones and homonyms. The word play can be a bit tricky for younger kids.
Tiffany Aching Series by Terry Pratchett
It starts with {{The Wee Free Men}}