Hi all,
I have run into a strange problem that I beleive the parents in this forum can relate to and help. DD5 has been tested at reading at a 5th grade level. I've found that she can read most anything, she was like this entering K this year.
My problem is finding books (for pleasure reading) that are at her level of ability, but for a 5 year old. I've found some things like classics (she's only interested in the girly girl books, a true little princess herself) and American Girl and some sparkle books (the kittens and ponies) I've been reading them first to make sure there OK, but because the books are for 8-12 it has the problems girls that age might face, not a 5 year old. Are there books for kids like this?

Amelia Bedelia (if it's not too easy) and Pippi Longstocking come immediately to mind. How about the Magic Treehouse books? Too easy? Or just not princess-y enough?

I have a similar problem with DD4, though she is not reading at that level. But books that we read together at night etc. Chapter books often have stories to which she cannot relate.

But we are still doing the Magic Tree House and things like the Tales of Desperaux.

Good luck.
Ren

I think I've solved your problem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oz_books
the 15 or so I've read are perfect for a princessy 5 year old, IMHO. Some are a bit weak on plot, but I think that might be a benifit for the 5ish crowd.
Wonderful characters and lots of action and description.

Also try -
E.B. White
Rold Dahl
Bruce Coville
Little House on the Praire series

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/girls_women.htm
is a wonderful resource.

cultivating librarian friends has been a great help to us.
Also amazon.com's 'Other people who bought this book also bought' feature.

Best Wishes,
Grinity

Dinotopia - words and pictures!

Also not princess-y, but I loved the mystery series Encyclopedia Brown when I was a young child.

It's kid-based mystery, so no one dies (or ever even comes close). Even the usual bad guy/bully does little more than bluster and always gets his comeuppance thanks to EB's intelligence and cool head.

I'd second Grin's Little House suggestion, though IMHO, you probably need to have a talk about the treatment of Native Americans in the books along the way. The attitude of the series is *ahem* not very enlightened *ahem*.

Great suggestions! Thank you everyone! She reading chapter books (with and without me), and that is exactly what I was looking for. Those links are a great resource.

Well, I have boys (3,5, and 7--very advanced readers and/or listeners for their ages, but pretty sensitive to violence/scariness/injustice), but I have a couple of ideas that might work for your daughter:

-Esther Averill's "Cat Club" series are terrific--very genteel! The heroine is a female cat named Jenny; she has two brothers and a large cohort of feline friends, one of whom is a very princess-y Persian.

-James Thurber's kids' books are brilliant, and much-loved here (and most feature princesses!): Many Moons, The White Deer, The Wonderful O, and best of all, The Thirteen Clocks, which in my opinion is the best children's book ever written!!

-the lads like WM Thackeray's Xmas pantos, especially The Rose and the Ring (make sure you find a copy with the author's own illustrations and the rhyming couplets as the running header--accept no substitutes!)--princesses, fairies, princes, magic charms, battles, puns, it's got it all!

-George MacDonald's children's books are wonderful--The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, At the Back of the North Wind

-Can't go wrong with The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)

-my nieces like Sydney Taylor's All of a Kind Family series, and also the What Katy Did books (have spaced out on the author's name of those ones)

-there are all the LM Alcott books, of course--I vaguely remember one from my girlhood called Jack and Jill that seems to have been aimed at a slightly younger audience than Little Women and its sequels.

-the Narnia books have queens and things...

-also LM Montgomery--besides the Anne books (Anne of Green Gables, of the Island, of Avonlea, etc), there are the Emily books (Emily of New Moon, ...Climbs, ...'s Quest), also the Blue Castle, Pat of Silver Bush, etc.

-there's always The Secret Garden and The Little Princess (Frances Hodgson Burnett)

-not princessy but very good for either gender, in my estimation, are the Edward Eager books--Half Magic, Knight's Castle, etc. (and there are 7 of them, wahoo!)

-my kids have loved some of the previous suggestions here--all of the EB White books, as well as Encyclopedia Brown (worth mentioning in this context that Encyclopedia has a female sidekick named Sally); the Bruce Coville Shakespeare adaptations (comedies only at our house for now!) have been very popular here

-I always like poetry for kids this age, too--much loved here is the Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear, and various things of WS Gilbert (of G&S fame)--Bab ballads and so on

-the JP Martin "Uncle" books are odd but fun (an elephant king with a wacky castle and strange adventures)

-maybe just a read-aloud now for a 5 year-old, but you must have on your shelves for later! is TH White's the Sword in the Stone--Harpo has read this over and over--and Groucho got White's Mistress Masham's Repose for Xmas, which we love so far.

-very popular here, though possibly difficult to get outside of Canada, are Christie Harris's Mouse Woman books (MW and the Mischief-Makers, MW and the Muddleheads, MW and the Vanished Princesses)--adaptations of Haida myths--Harpo especially loved these at that age.

-Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden is perfect! (secrets, magic, friendship, time travel...)

-also popular here, though not very girly at all, is Kipling (Kim, Jungle Book, Just So Stories).

We tend to gravitate toward the Victorians or Edwardians for advanced vocabulary, but age-appropriate in terms of sex/violence/scariness/sassiness.

Sorry to babble--nothing I'd rather talk about than kids' books, though! Hope some of these might suit--

peace
minnie

PS Does she like animals? Groucho loved Farley Mowat's Owls in the Family and The Dog who Wouldn't Be--I gave them to my nieces (who are extremely girly girls), and they liked them, too.

Had a couple other ideas for fantasy-type books:

The Hidden Folk, by Lisa Lunge-Larsen, with the most beautiful pictures in the world by Beth Krommes (stories of dwarves, nisses, water horses, selkies, etc.)

The Secret World of Og by Pierre Berton (a Canadian classic).

minnie

DD4 (into princessy stuff) loves the Weather Fairy chapter book series. Very innocent and girly! She's not reading chapter books, but likes us to read these to her. She also loves Flat Stanley books. DS6 still loves the Magic Tree House series. I have heard other parents say they are too "easy" for second or third graders, but I never understood that because I could see a much older kid enjoying them. DD6 has read each book in the series at least twice. They also have "study guides" that are non-fiction books about the historical or scientific topic the story introduces.

I agree, Jool. I think the reading level of the Magic Treehouse books is pretty simple, but the stories are compelling and the characters are well-written. It's certainly worth a try at least. There are so many of them, that if they're into it, it can keep them busy for a long, LONG while!

we are starting to go for biographys. ds7 is interested in einstien at the moment so we got him a biography,

Walter Farley has a lot of books you can look at.

http://www.theblackstallion.com/books_theseries_n.html

But as far as a central female character - L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" is good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wrinkle_in_Time

All of her books have a GT undercurrent:

"Meg Murry is a teenage girl, regarded by her friends and teachers as a bad-tempered adolescent. Her family recognizes her problem as a lack of emotional maturity but also regards her as being capable of great things. The family includes her pretty scientist mother, her mysteriously missing scientist father, her five year-old brother Charles Wallace Murry �a nascent super-genius� and ten-year-old twins, athletic brothers Sandy and Dennys."

I'm glad to see so many great books here. It was a nice surprise to see Animal Ark listed, as my kids were rabid fans from around ages 3-6. They are very formulaic, but great for animal lovers, and both boys and girls, as the main character is a girl with a boy for a best friend.

Some really fun princess books are the Frog Princess books by ED Baker. They are probably 4th-5th grade level. The Royal Diaries are based on fact and have some nasty parts, but are very well done, as are Carolyn Meyer's Princess books.

Non fiction is a good way to go for kids who read way beyond their years. Soup mentioned biographies: there is a series titled, "Who was_________" written at a 3rd/4th grade level. We have Mozart and have checked out other versions such as Annie Oakley at the library. The print is large and the books are about 100 pages in length.

I just love book talk!

I just picked this up this morning.

Its fascinating.

The best part is that Galileo converted his findings into simple experiments that anyone could do that made a mockery of the convoluted explanations of his opponents for their opposing worldview. He sliced them up with Occam's Razor!!!! It has an Animal Farm feel to it.

http://www.amazon.com/Galileo-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0192854569

In a startling reinterpretation of Galileo's trial, Stillman Drake advances the hypothesis that Galileo's prosecution and condemnation by the Inquisition was caused not by his defiance of the Church but by the hostility of contemporary philosophers.

My DD8 sounds a lot like your daughter. I'm repeating some of what others have said, but couldn't resist chiming in since she sounds so similar to my daughter. My DD8 loved (and still does sometimes) reading the Barbie Princess books (Fairytopia, Island Princess, etc). She also has read the Little House series MANY times. There's a fantastic fancy book called "Fairytopia" that she begged for and poured over for at least a year. It has flaps to lift, a letter in an envelope, pixie dust, etc.

I also always recommend Usborne books - they are fabulous. I know they have some princess ones, but their non-fiction is actually best. If you aren't familiar with them, they are a home-based business (like Tupperware). Here is my consultant's website in case you don't have one: www.raisereaders.com.

Here are some other of her old favorites from age 5 or so:
--Animal Ark series
--Encyclopedia Brown series
--Disney Fairies series
--The Penderwick's (there are 2 books about them so far - not princess-like, but great wholesome story about a family's adventures) - one of her ALL-TIME favorites!
--Dear America series - historical fiction about America. They are written from the point of view of a young girl (have to watch the content though - she read some about the civil war where it mentioned slaves being beaten-not in graphic detail, but still).
Good luck!

Both of the Penderwicks books were hits here. We also enjoyed the All of a Kind Family series and are currently reading the Meg Mackintosh mysteries by Lucinda Landon.

We just had a big hit in "A Series of Unfortunate Events" with ds6 ... read each of the first two in about an hour and a half each, straight through. He loved them!

Good luck, it can be tricky!

This is amazing, I'm printing this thread and taking it with me to the bookstore, I knew there had to be things out there for a girl her age with her reading ability I just didn't know where to start. I had a feeling the parents in this forum would have the best information, you guys are great!

Another note about the Dear America series: My DD8 and I started a mother-daughter book club with their civil war series of 4 books. We invited 3 other pairs of girls/moms and each 'hosted' a discussion about their month's book. The Scholastic website has some great resources for hosting book clubs with Dear America books. They even have craft/menu/activity ideas for certain books. The last pair that hosted did charades with words from the Civil War time period, kids against moms - it was fun and got us talking about all the books again. And it happened to be right before the election, so we even discussed current events.

My DD8 loved the club and wanted to continue with another DA series. However, the other girls in the club, while gifted, aren't as big of readers, so by the fourth book their moms had trouble getting them to finish the books. We did buy a video based on one of the books though, so we may have a 'reunion' soon to all watch the video.

The original plan was for the mom/daughter pair to read each book together. I miss reading with DD8, so my motivation was mostly selfish ;-). As luck would have it, DD8 couldn't wait for me to be available, so she would 'sneak' the next month's book to her room and read it without me :-) Anyway, if you ever wanted to host a book club with your child, I recommend checking Scholastic's website for resources that make it easy.

YES - Lemony Snicket is AWESOME! Warning though: my DD8 is quite sensitive (we always say her imagination is too vivid) and was too scared to read the first book a couple of years ago. Then this spring, she soared through all 13 in a couple of weeks - I couldn't buy them fast enough! So if yours is sensitive too, it may mean waiting until s/he is ready.

Sorry I keep posting long-winded messages; obviously, we are big readers!

I wanted to make sure you all know about the Scholastic Warehouse Sales. We have a warehouse near us (check http://www.scholastic.com/bookfairs/events/warehouse/). We're on their mailing list, so twice/year usually Dec. and May, they email us an announcement of their upcoming sale. I think all books are at least 50% off with the exception of a short list that are 'only' 30% off. We spend about $150 each time and bring home 1-2 cases of books. My DD8 just goes to the box whenever she wants a new book (luckily she loves to re-read her favorites, so they tend to last about 6 months).

That reminds me: one of the best books we've ever gotten at their warehouse sale is "The Princess Academy". DD8 has read it at least 2 dozen times. I happened to pick it up because it won a medal (we tend to love all children's medal winners, but usually don't love adult winners - what does that say about my maturity level ;-)...). Another one we got there that may appeal to the original princess that started this thread is Ella Enchanted.

I had one more thought--has your daughter read "Miss Hickory" by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey? Reaching back deep into the mists of time (!), I remember that this was one of my favourite books when I was five. Miss Hickory is an appletwig doll with a nut head (hazel? acorn? can't remember) and a corncob cabin; she gets left behind by her human family one hard winter, and has to live outdoors with the animals instead of in the house. One slightly disturbing touch at the end--a squirrel eats her head!!! (I remember my small self being startled but not grieved by this--don't know how your DD would feel.) But she grafts her body onto an apple tree, and so lives on forever near her family's house.

Austin, we love A Wrinkle in Time, too--I haven't read the rest of the series, though. The Black Stallion is also v. good--have you seen the Coppola film as well? Very beautiful, I think.

peace
minnie