Hi,

Dd 7 and I are really struggling to find books she enjoys at the moment. Nothing in junior fiction seems to be grabbing her, she's read most of the standard classics and I'm struggling to find YA fiction that is not about vampires etc and/or is not focused on romance/sex. Things are further complicated by the fact that dd, like me, is not great at the whole willing suspension of disbelief thing and so unless fantasy is great (she's a big fan of the Hobbit/LOTR, etc) she just switches off.

Reading is really her only area of self extension and she loves complex political/social and historical plot lines but trying to find them with age appropriate content is a challenge (we're ok with her reading texts with very low level sex, i.e. where sex is implied but not described - not because we're worried about her knowing about sex; she's well across the birds and the bees, but just from a life experience point of view - and a bit of romance is fine too, but too much bores her). A year ago her reading comprehension tested at a 10th grade level and she's come along leaps and bounds since then, so there's not much she can't read and understand.

As I type this it occurs to me that maybe there would be a greater range in adult fiction - Neither DH or I are fiction readers though, so I don't know what might be great. Any suggestions?

How about The Leviathan series by Scott Westerfeld? Steampunk genre, so a bit of suspension of belief, but very well written. It has a strong female lead and is a take on WWI events.

I just finished Splendors and Glooms, which might be right up her alley. It's set in Victorian England, about a girl who vanishes right after seeing a puppet theater at her birthday. It has magic/fantastic elements in it, but most of those are offstage, not the center of the novel. The novel itself revolves around Clara (the vanished girl), and the two poor children who work for the puppet theater. Definitely age-appropriate, definitely historical, and definitely complex use of language.

Another thing you might try is the bestsellers of 150+ years ago. You shouldn't have to worry about sex, although there may be romance, and the society can be complex and interesting, and of course totally believeable. I really enjoy Anthony Trollope - try Barchester Towers if she's not intimidated by big heavy books, or The Warden if she is.

Fantasy is a genre that lends itself to picking up tone, style, and world building and such from the first few pages. I'll suggest a few classic fantasy series that could stay for a long time if she enjoys them. But these are towads the adult side of young adult in terms of reading level.

These are both in fantasy humor:
Piers Anthony's Xanth series (first book - A Spell for Chameleon)
Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (first book - The Colour of Magic)

Not humor:
Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books (first - A Wizard of Earthsea)
Phillip Pullman - Golden Compass

I just went to the schoolastic book wizard and typed in enders game, one of my favorite books I've ever read and I would recommend it to anybody. Then I pressed the book alike button. It came up with a list which included this that looked good to me : H.I.V.E. Higher Institute for Villianeous Education, and it included the handmaidens tale, which I haven't read but might be less interesting to a child because its a dystopian future about a couple's surrogate slave , from what I've heard. All that to say I would tell her to type the name of a book she likes into the bookwizard then look up interesting titles on amazon for a better description and to see reviews.

My daughter's favorite books from 5 on (still today) are all by Diana Wynne Jones. Fantasy, but exceptionally well-written. Themes are very psychological. No sex at all. Start with the Chrestomanci series, and take it from there.

I'm a big fan of The Sisters Grimm series and the central character sounds just like your DD - not great at suspending disbelief but then finds out that she is a descendent of The Brothers Grimm and she is plopped down in a modern American town that is populated by every conceivable fairy tale character through history. All of these characters have modern day versions of themselves (i.e Snow White is a school teacher, the three little pigs have taken on human form and are the town's police force, etc.) She and her sister face some major adventures and soon you find yourself suspending disbelief whether you want to or not and her cynicism completely matches that of the reader. If any of the characters catches her attention there are a million tangents to go on to follow up on their original story. (i.e. Puck is a central character. In one of the books Oberon and Titania were introduced as characters so that led us to A Midsummer Night's Dream.)

Other favorites for my DD8 who also has high level comprehension - The Harry Potter series, A Wrinkle in Time and The Westing Game. We also did several of the Anne of Green Gables books (Anne grows up, gets married and has babies but no sexual content) and a lot of classics. She loved Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol so we will probably do more Dickens. Some of the classics, i.e. Dr. Dolittle, have some racist material that caught us off guard so they are not necessarily as safe a bet as I had assumed.

Someone already beat me to Ender's Game, which will be a movie this November, so that's an extra inducement (my own DD8 likes to do things backwards, by watching the movies, then reading the books). I endorse Zen Scanner's Xanth selection was well... in fact, I just picked up the first three Xanth books for DD8.

I don't agree with the Discworld series for a kid that young, though. I think they're fantastic, but I think that too much of the humor would sail over the heads of 7yos, due to lack of exposure to social and scientific concepts. It's kinda like Monty Python... sure, the Silly Walks skit has humor that's immediately accessible to anyone, but there's a whole other level where they've pilloried government and bureaucracy that a 7yo just wouldn't get.

Other recommendations in the fantasy genre I'd make to a 7yo who is reading at the right level:

Belgariad/Mallorean series - David Eddings (first book - Pawn of Prophecy) - 10 books total
Riftwar Cycle - Raymond E. Feist (first book - Magician: Apprentice) - a crapload of books total

Oh, and DD has been obsessed with Harry Potter for 3 years now, and she's making us watch the movies again this week. So there's that.

Harry Potter lead us to other boarding school series (1940s/Enid Blyton types) - the language (being British) gave a lot of scope for discussion and while they're not heavy political stuff, they offered my kid (DD5) a chance to live vicariously through older girls. she hasn't had much patience for a lot of the more contemporary ones, but anything post-war and earlier has been a big hit!

Ahhhhh... That thread again

At that age I was reading everything mythology related. The gore content in the Illyad and Odyssey is fairly high but lack of life experience is actually protective (or it was for me -- YMMMV). After the Greek/Roman myths I walked my way through a whole series of collected tales for different countries/cultures the world over.



I disagree about that disagreement. First because there are several strands of books in that series, and some (the Tiffany Aching sub-series?) would be more age appropriate than others. Note that the oldest books (The Color of Magic and the next ones) are the weakest.

Second because one of the joys of my life is to pick up a book I read and loved as a child ten years later and discover a whole new layer of meaning and enjoyment within its pages. Much better than picking up a childhood favorite and discovering it is twaddle, or, worse, incredibly sexist/racist/whatever. And the best of books will keep giving as you re-read them every 10 years or so.

I concur with kcab on the big NO on The Handmaiden Tale, which is dystopian future set in a theocracy where the main protagonist is one of many slave women kept to be repeatedly raped by the master of the house and any resulting offspring taken away. Very adult themes, and I am not sure it can be read as an adventure of resistance and escape beyond the political message.

OTOH I find the *idea* behind The Hunger Games pretty horrifying and have avoided reading them for that reason, when I would probably have loved then at 10-12. Ditto Lowry's The Giving (cannot understand how this can be sold as youth literature, but maybe watching colicky infants euthanized is only horrifying to young/new parents? I read it at a time when my oldest was keeping me up all night...).

Lack of life experience can be protective at that age -- I found 1984 very boring when I read it as a pre-teen, I am sure the horror factor would be higher now.

+1 Diana Wynne Jones.

Fantasy with large scale realistic world building... You can scratch The Game of Thrones from your list . Has she read the YA classics? Tamora Pierce?

No, no, she is doing it the only sane way

If I read the book then watch the movie first the casting and visuals never feel entirely right, then I spend the whole movie ranting about everything they got wrong when translating the story to screen. It does not make for an enjoyable experience.

If I watch the movie then read the book the movie experience does not interfere with my reading much.

And I don't really visualize when I read, so that's not the issue...

I loved those books as a child. But while I am reading them with my kids there are a lot of those racism/sexism/... moments.

Enid Blyton was very much a woman of her time and (social) place.

I don't have this problem, as long as the movies are done well. DW and I were quite pleased with the HP movies from a visual standpoint, though we did note that the storytelling started leaving out vital bits in episodes 4-6.

The differences between the books and movies have been a regular topic of conversation as I read them to DD, and in some places we even noted improvements in the movie. For example, in Chamber of Secrets (we just re-watched it last night), there's the scene where the Weasley boys rescue Harry from imprisonment in his bedroom, towing away the iron bars on his window with a flying car. In the movie, Uncle Vernon grabs hold of Harry, the car pulls away, and Vernon tumbles out the window, landing in the shrubs. He doesn't fall out in the book. The movie version is funnier.

And even though she watched the movies first, she's still pretty miffed about how the Quidditch World Cup got chopped to pieces in the movie, now that she has read it in the book. It's a complaint she voices every time she watches it again. She wants to see veela.

A genre she may like to try would be "Gothic Romance" from the 1940's through the early 1970's. You'll have to find them online (search the term on Ebay) or at a used book dealer.

Don't let the term, "Gothic" fool you. It's not about vampires, it's more soft thriller, than anything; with a strong dose of mystery, usually. The romance part is also not highly sexual. Mostly, I'd say the genre concentrates on a so-called "damsel in distress".

I've been a fan of these for years and have yet to find one that has any descriptive sexuality. Or cussing or goriness. Think along the lines of Perry Mason and Della Street meeting for the first time and Della falls in love with Perry only to discover his family has a strange secret....one that may be her undoing!



If I had a seven year old daughter who could read at a low high school level, I'd be comfortable with these for her.

My son was reading about that same level at age 7 and here is what he was reading, if it helps!

The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel (series)
Lord of the Rings (trilogy)
H.I.V.E. (series)
Leven Thumps (series)
The Bartimaeus Trilogy (first is Amulet of Samarkand)
D'Aulaires book of Greek Myths (and Norse)
Harry Potter
Sword of the Rightful King


He is now 9 and reading Ender's Game, and has also enjoyed Hunger Games and The Maze Runner series. He is getting ready to start Three Musketeers. He is a two books at a time kid- one fiction and one nonfiction.

Although The Handmaid's Tale is one of my all-time favorite books, I would not suggest it to anyone Pre-high school. It isn't about sex as much as control, identity and power.

My kids are not PG, but it's hard for me to write off children's lit at age 7, even for PG. I don't doubt that she can read very hard books, but she doesn't HAVE to always reads that high, you know? There's so much good stuff in the 5th-7th grade levels. It's still very young.

There are a lot of older books out there, often British. Has she done all of Frances Hodgson Burnett? Tom's Midnight Garden? E.Nesbit? Green Knowe? Narnia? Noel Streitfield? The Borrowers? The Moomintroll series? Swallows and Amazons? The Bagthorpes? Joan Aiken?

For adult fiction, you could try Dickens.

I really need to work on my grammer and to be a little more clear. I was recommending using the bookwizard book alike tool to find book lists based on lexile and interest level based on book titles she's liked lately. The book wizard made a list based on Enders Game that included H.I.V.E. and The Handmaidens Tale as well as others. Those two popped out at me because I thought H.I.V.E. looked enjoyable for a kid and The Handmaidens Tale did not, based on what I've heard about the book. I just meant as a tool to browse books listed at a similar interest level, but I'm not speaking very clearly and should have just mentioned "window shopping" with the book wizard and then taking a closer look using amazon. I should have that last sentence the first time and not bothered to enter a book title because it muddled what I was trying to say instead of illustrating it. lol

Here's some from the book alike button for Charles Dickens Christmas Carol
(reading level grade 8.6) (interest level grades 6-8),
The Fellowship of the Ring
Memoirs of a Geisha
Around the World in Eighty Days
The wind in the willows (gr8, interest level, gr 3)
The Prince and the Pauper (Mark Twain)(gr 8, interest 6)
Gullivers Travels
The Incredible Journey
Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
A Midsummer Nights Dream (Shakespeare)
The Last of The Mohicans
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Pilgram's Progess
Out of the Silent Planet (CS Lewis)

All of these say a 8th-9th grade reading level, and several of them say a younger grade interest level. That's why I say go enter a title she likes and browse through the suggestions.

As a young child I absolutely devoured all books related to classical history, its myths and legends. I actually found children's fiction boring but history/legends were just fascinating - better than the kid's fiction in fact. The creation myths of just about everyone from Aborginal Australians to Ancient Egyptians were good stuff too as were the Just So stories by Kipling.

My DD8 loved the Harry Potter series all of them are now truly dog eared from constant re-reading, loved the Hobbit but has yet to get absorbed by LOR, the 'Percy Jackson' stuff (several series here) and currently is really into the Brian Jacques 'Redwall' series - which at first glance appears lame but uses surprisingly a broad and advanced vocabulary. She also likes graphic novels - to my surprise she picked up my Logicomix and got really into paradoxes for a while as a result! She is starting Sophie's World now which I think is a great book.

Thanks so much for all your suggestions, I really appreciate it. Because I've never really 'got' fiction (I know, what's to get right?!) I have no grounding in what's good. The flip side of that is that I've never been too fussed about a book's 'status' or reading level and so I completely agree with the idea of books not needing to be high level (her favourite books are the Harry Potter books, the Montmaray historical fiction series ... and a book called What Bumosaur Is That ...) and that's the way we've always approached things - it's just that she's hit a point with her reading where she's not finding less complex books satisfying and she has over a dozen half read books scattered across the floor. She's read, read and re-read Harry Potter, was through all the main Enid Blyton series, Tom's Midnight Garden, the Rats of Nhim etc by 5.5, has read the Hobbit, LOTR, the Narnia books, classics like Little Women, collections of greek myths etc. She has read the Hunger Games, which she loved and half of Catching Fire, which she found to be a bit much of the same thing (other than some preliminary research on what a book entails I largely trust her to self censor as she has always done so very capably). She's read every historical fiction book she can get her hands on - but is finding the ones aimed at elementary and middle school a bit formulaic and I've been unsure where to go next with those. So I'll happily give most things a go. I think for dd, who spends most of her day hiding what she can do and being super-duper socially 'acceptable', reading is her one way of extending herself and exploring the world - good and bad - in an inconspicuous way (her school encourages her reading choices and she is in a good gifted cohort so no one thinks twice about what she brings in). Thanks too, La Texan, for the scholastic book wizard suggestion - I knew what you meant in your first post

Thanks too for the Sophie's World idea, madeinuk, I've got that on a shelf somewhere - I have been keen to try her on something more definitively philosophical.

Off to the library for me!

Thanks again.

If she likes historical fiction, I'd recommend The Agency series by YS Lee. It's about a 17-year-old girl in 1850s London who is a secret spy for an all-female spy agency. It's an excellent book with a strong female lead, with only a hint of romance. The author has a PhD in Victorian literature and culture, so not only is it engrossing, it's also fairly accurate (except for the all female spy agency part). It's targeted for grades 8-12 but I also really enjoyed it.

If you could possibly find a sympathetic children's librarian, it could really help. I hate to suggest a bit of deception, but you might consider going in solo and not mentioning age--just saying "She reads at about this level and she's recently enjoyed these books..." The right librarian would get it, and there definitely are librarians who understand precocious readers, but your DD's precocity is pretty out there, so I don't know.

Also, I do think you should try Dickens. I read Oliver Twist in 5th grade, I think. And there sure is plenty of Dickens. Also, try Jane Eyre. Jack London? Arthur Conan Doyle? Mark Twain? (You would want to be careful with Twain regarding racial issues)

If she likes humor, I also started to love James Thurber's stuff around 5th grade or so. Hmm....what about Steinbeck? Some of it is rather sad/heavy, though. Willa Cather is another suggestion. I would look for reading lists for jr. high/early high school and pull out the classics and then scan the summaries to see if they look appropriate.

My 8 year old has the high school librarian pulling books for him and checking them out to him. She knows him and what he has read and knows the books in her library. The last thing she pulled was the Golden Compass series. The high school has a wide range of books as far as level of books goes.

How this came about is that our school district has the district-wide card catalog all online and connected. DS8 was looking for the next book in a series and his library didn't have it but the catalog showed that the high school had it. My dh works there so he went and talked to her about checking it out in his name (DS could have asked for it to be sent to his school and checked it out through his school but that would have taken a few days and patience isn't his middle name). The librarian at the high school has become one of our best resources.

The elementary school librarian is also very helpful but I think my son exhausts her. She has been willing to break the rules for him. He is required to check out one Spanish book and one English book each week (that is a classroom rule of his Dual Language Program) and they are limited to 2 books per week. She has broken the 2 book rule and allowed him to have more at one time and he is one kid who pretty much has an open pass to go to the library and return books and check out new ones.

I know these PG kids can go rapidly through reading lists and library collections. I've got some suggestions:

1. Have you had a look at Library of Books (http://www.bookslinksandmore.org/) suggestions? She has two PG kids. So there may be something your DS hasn't read yet.
2. Have you tried the following books:
The Giver; Fahrenheit 451; Carry On, Mr. Bowditch (FYI - a number of people die due to life at sea and early 19th century)? Those are rather serious books. Dahl is my favorite for the humor. Terry Deary's Horrible Histories are pretty good though, if you like that humor. Terry Pratchett has a lot of books that might work.
Paulo Coehlo's The Alchemist is a good read too.
3. I recently read Conor Grennan's Little Princes book on orphans in Nepal. It was a very inspiring and moving book, I thought. It's a non-fiction memoir, but it might appeal to your daughter. Of course, she might want to fly off to Nepal after reading it though.

I do have to agree with you on the content and problems over fiction with a PG child reading so ahead. It's rather challenging finding appropriate material in the YA section; there's so much that is inappropriate. I'm relieved my PGlet has turned to non-fiction. That makes it a tad easier.

Thank you all so much. Now I've got a spreadsheet full of suggestions! I'm surprised at the relief I feel at having such a list to draw from - I feel a little less like I am flying blind. I do feel slightly ridiculous to have such a poor knowledge of fiction - we have a house full of books, many of which will stand her in good stead if she's interested in politics, history and philosophy down the track, but perhaps I'll take this chance to share some fiction with her. Thanks again

Skip Memoir of a Geisha. There's at least one part unsuitable for a 7yo (not a bad read for an adult though).

Look for Newberry Award winners, honor books, runners up, etc. Usually the content is complex and the stories are entertaining. Virginia Reader's choice books are another place to look. The American Library Association also grants awards to good books.

If she likes humorous stuff, you might try Robert Asprin's "Myth" series. It's light, humorous fantasy along the lines of the Xanth books. I don't remember any inappropriate levels of sex, but everyone please feel free to correct my lousy memory if that's wrong.

Another Piers Anthony series, the "Apprentice Adept" books, might work -- there is occasional mention of sex but nothing detailed.

Has she read the Moomintroll books?

Also, Madeleine L'Engle's series of "A Wrinkle in Time", "A Wind in the Door", "A Swiftly Tilting Planet", and "A Ring of Endless Light".

Scott O'Dell, "Island of the Blue Dolphins".

I might have some disagreement on "Ender's Game" for a 7-year-old. It has always been one of my favorites, but I tried it a while back on DS and was appalled at the thoughtless violence of Peter and some of the boys. I decided, given DS's particular case, that we should likely wait a few more years on that one. YMMV.

The "Myth" series are great romps, but light on world building, complex characters, and politics.

Particularly thinking towards Nerdnproud's "What is this thing called fiction?" side of the thread... Richly complex worlds with many characters and delving into politics and character depth can be as much sandboxes as they are their own content and language utilitization. It is a fertile playground to explore issues of philosophy and politics and human interaction outside of the expected/known world. Some people work best with many viewpoints and situations to develop robust ideas and fiction can help fit that need (because for some reason performing secret social experiments on friends and classmates is frowned upon .)