My DD7 has loved the Harry Potter series and devoured that, she liked Wolves of the Beyond last year as well as Guardians of Ga'Hoole, Warrior Cats, etc. Nothing has captured her attention very deeply since Harry Potter. Her lexile level is around 1,000 and I want age appropriate content. Any ideas?

My DS7 loved the Familiars series. I think it's a bit easier than Harry Potter, but he loved those books. He's currently enjoying the 39 Clues series.
For more challenging books, I would recommend Half Magic. I think the lexile is a bit higher. Matilda by Roald Dahl is a favorite. You might consider A Wrinkle in Time or the Chronicles of Narnia for more classic books.

Anne of Green Gables
The Secret Garden
Septimus Heap Series
By Scholastic there is a Dragon series as well

DS7 just finished Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books. He liked those as much or more than Potter. "The Book of Three" is the 1st of 5.

My DS6 is passionate about the Lucy and Stephen Hawking books starting with George's Secret Key to the Universe. There are three in the series with a fourth coming out in June. He loves anything by Kate DiCamillo. Chronicles of Narnia! and we haven't started the Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper yet, but it's fantastic! Might start spark an interested in Arthurian legend.

Try "A College of Magics" and "A Scholar of Magics" by Caroline Stevermer? The setting is historical and it's not as "fun" as Harry Potter, but it has some similar elements (a boarding school for magic at which the protagonist must survive, then use her magic talents against real evil later).


Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede have co-written some others in similar sorts of worlds, and have individual YA novels as well that might be of interest.

Have you tried Rick Riorden novels?

Maybe "Beauty" by Robin McKinley? Scholastic lists the "interest level" as grade 5, but I feel like the complexity of the text is higher than that. A retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

If you are moving towards books like Susan Cooper's, you might also like Nancy Farmer's "Sea of Trolls" series. It is the next fantasy series on the list for DS7.

DS7 read alot of mythology back in the fall... greek, norse, robin hood, arthur, versions of the illiad, odyssey etc, etc. This was popular and good for both general cultural literacy and for reading fantasy type books. "Sea of Trolls" is heavily viking/norse mythology based. Mythology could be a hook to make it more popular or it could be a hook to encourage an interest in mythology. Either way, reading kids versions of mythology could be worthwhile.

Second the Rick Riordan and Madeleine L'Engle novels; I still read those. :-)

The Beyonders seems to be a decent series as well.

Murderous Maths and Horrible Science are quite entertaining. :-)

She loved the Narnia books last year and just brought one of the Narnia books home last week from school. She has been bringing home biographies, but she seems to prefer fantasy worlds.

It seems like this topic comes up about every months. I'll say what I tell everyone who asks this question.

Diana Wynne Jones - Chrestomancy Series
-- There are 6 or 7 books in this world. You can start with any the the books but I like to suggest "The Lives of Christopher Chant" These are excellent for a HP lover. It's a magical alternative world.

Oh! Anne McCaffrey's Brainship series is a treat to read!

Nick and Tesla's High Voltage Danger Lab and Nick and Tesla's Robot Army Rampage

Books devoured at our house recently by DS 8

Chickadee - by Louise Erdrich

Dumpling Days - by Grace Lin

Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library - by Chris Grabenstein

That's a good idea! Somewhere on another forum someone was asking about YA SF and this would've been a good suggestion. There's a great deal of fantasy for kids, but much less good science fiction.

On a related note, though, I'd caution about Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, some of which turn up listed as YA. These are great books and kids will like them, but because of the reproductive processes of the dragons, I'd avoid 'em until middle school age or pre-read each book individually.

I let DD10 (then 9, I think) read the Harper Hall series within the dragon riders books, Aufilia - it's pretty clean.

The first two Harper Hall books are clean (and they hang together very well as a duology by themselves), but there's a three page face-to-black scene at the beginning of chapter 11 in Dragondrums that I wouldn't be ok with for this age.

It's not explicit (and I can't recall the other books being explicit either) but I think there's a lot of complexity and grayness and hair-splitting around the nature of consent and consensual relationships that I wouldn't want to try to dive into at this age.

Huh - I just went and found it. I had no idea what that meant when I was 12 and read it, and my DD apparently didn't either, because she didn't mention it to me. I see it now as an adult, though.

I remember being totally shocked by that scene when I first read it at 12. But then, I managed to get ahold of such classics as Clan of the Cavebear that very same year, which is Very Educational reading in many respects. (Ahhh, the dangers of being being undersupervised by harried parents in a public library...)

DD10 is reading The Mysterious Benedict Society series and enjoying it a lot.

She read The Giver in school this past year so I just placed a pre-order on Amazon for The Giver quartet; which condenses all 4 books by Lois Lowry into one novel. I think she will love reading the three follow up books to The Giver.