Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Need complex fiction suggestions for PG 7yo

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.