As the title says. My 9yo is a real bookworm and isn’t intimidated by thick books. Now that he’s finished Harry Potter I would like to give him a new challenge. He likes fantasy most. We already read the Chronicles of Narnia as well. And I grew up in Germany so don’t know an awful lot about English books for older kids and preteens. Thank you for your help 😊
by Im_a_knitiot
7 Comments
I don’t remember what age I was when I read them but the pendragon series are one of the books I remember reading outside of Harry Potter.
Animorphs was also fun but I’m not sure of the target audience age for that.
Sounds like he’s at least ready for The Hobbit. Maybe for The Lord of the Rings as well.
I bet he’d also like The Hero from Otherwhere by Jay Williams, though that’s not a series.
Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea trilogy (plus a later add-on I haven’t read) might strike his fancy. The first one is very good. The middle one’s a tad dark but quite good and the last one struck me as just dull. His mileage might vary.
Watership Down by Richard Adams is also a good possibility. It’s not a series, but it’s a thick book.
And of course if he hasn’t read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, he should get right on that.
Oh! And A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle. Absolutely! If you can somehow persuade him to stop there rather than moving on to A Swiftly Tilting Planet, that would be ideal.
The Garth Nix Sabriel series and The Keys to the Kingdom (starting with Mister Monday) could challenge him as well.
Rick Riordan’s books are fun, age-appropriate, and there are tons of them (lots of series, some of which intersect or have overlapping characters). Would start with the Percy Jackson books, first is “The Lightning Thief.”
For “more challenging” options, these are still age-appropriate and not crazy long, but they are more literary/oblique, with language that’s a bit old-fashioned, and can be a good challenge in that regard:
* Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain series, first is “The Book of Three”
* Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series, first is “Over Sea, Under Stone”
I absolutely LOVED The Edge Chronicles when i was his age. Start with the Twig trilogy. Just wonderful, exciting fantasy books. I still read them now as a 28yo.
The *Chrestomanci* series by Diana Wynne Jones
charmed life by Diana Wynne Jones came before hp.
My 11y/o stepbrother currently reads the Eragon series (it’s popular in Germany as well:)).
Also I loved the Warrior cats series around that age.