My kids have been counting the days until Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
comes out. Ian doesn't quite understand the content of the books, but he spends hours looking at the pictures, and he loves the Do-It-Yourself Book
and is devouring The 39 Clues Book 1:The Maze of Bones
My Wimpy Kids
Apt. 11d 
My kids don’t know about Dog Days yet. Saving that for a special occasion.
My daughter is blazing through the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Aspie boy thinks reading the Lego catalog is enough, and his father is encouraging him. I have to get on this.
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Ooh, cool. Does 39 Clues have shades of lemony snicket (and the resulty tragedies, which don’t work for my sensitive kids — or their sensitive mother)?
I love to hear what other kids are reading, especially when it’s broadening. My daughter has loved the Riordan Lightning thief series, but then moved on to girl-goddess lit (i.e. the Goddess Boot Camp, the Pandora series, and the Gallagher Academy books.
She’s never been a wimpy kid fan, but I’m trying to make sure we have suggestions for the 5 year old boy who is starting to read when he gets there (I don’t think godesss lit is going to fly with him).
I’m reading the Mysterious Benedict society and enjoying it now. I’ve told my daughter she has to wait until I’m done for it (borrowed from the library).
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Is The 39 Clues worth reading if you aren’t planning to spend all your cash on the associated do-dads? I’ve been avoiding it on the assumption it was a giant sucking sound waiting to happen.
BJ, another author to look at for female fantasy is Tamora Pierce. My daughter loves everything she wrote. Screen them to see if they are too mature for your daughter, though. Mine’s nine, and there have been a few bits here and there that I could have done without, but overall I think they’ve been fine. (And she also hated Lemony Snicket. She read them all, in order, from the library, but really didn’t enjoy them and has never re-read them, unlike practically ever other book she’s ever read.)
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Wendy,
Have you looked into Usborne books for E? I’m getting to be a huge fan of their non-fiction reference and children’s books. I don’t know how accurate the texts are (since the ones we have are outside my areas of expertise), but the illustrations are beautiful and the newer books are internet-linked. A current favorite that E might like is Usborne’s Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. It’s not fiction, but it’s a step up from the LEGO catalogue.
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We like the Usborne books, too. They were my daughter’s “gateway drug” into becoming a voracious reader of practically everything.
We also like the Eye Witness from DK. Can’t speak to accuracy, either, but they seem fine for children’s books.
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PS: I think the Usborne books worked for at that reading stage because they offered her real content at her reading level. She learned things she didn’t know, for example, about chocolate, underwear, fashion, . . . . The fiction that was accessible to her at that reading level was too boring for her (i.e early reading chapter books). Her first real fiction book was the first of the Sisters Grimm series by Buckley, when her reading level caught up with her interest level for fiction.
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My son (who also really enjoyed the Wimpy Kids books) is very keen on Terry Denton’s ‘StoryMaze’ series right now–they are fairly bizarre (or so they seem to me) but he enjoys the metafictionality and the wacky humour as well as the blend of graphics and text. On the strength of those, we just collected some books by Andy Griffith from the library that Terry Denton illustrated, and he likes those as well. In earlier days, we were big fans of the Captain Underpants series. They introduced a surprisingly sophisticated vocabulary: that’s where he learned the concept of a psychosomatic illness, for instance, back when he was about 5. They are full of ‘in jokes’ for the grownups (at one point, I recall, a character calls out “Billy! Don’t be a hero!”).
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E has read chapter books. He read all of Captain Underpants, Wimpy Kid (except the latest), Junie B Jones and most of Magic Tree House till he lost interest. We have many reference-type books, mostly geography, that he reads, and he and his dad are reading a Peanuts anthology now. I guess I just wish he would enjoy fiction. *sigh*
Soph and I just watched the trailer for the Lightning Thief, due out in February. Rosario Dawson, Catherine Keener, Melina Kanakaredes, Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean! Awesome cast.
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Next stop, Calvin and Hobbes?
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Around the World in 80 Days?
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Calvin and Hobbes: Been there. Regretted it because Calvin is so anti-social. 😉
Around the World in 80 Days might work for Geography Boy. I was also getting him into The Amazing Race because of the teams featured someone with AS, but … well, that didn’t turn out so great. 😦
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Jonah, who is extremely NT, is only getting into fiction now at age 10. And my husband only reads stuffy history books. As long as your kids are reading, don’t push the fiction. It’s hard, because we love it so much that we can’t imagine people not likely fiction. But it’s not for everyone.
bj, Jonah didn’t like Lemony Snicket, but is loving 39 clues. I asked him if it was scary. He said no.
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“Regretted it because Calvin is so anti-social. ;)”
Now that you mention it, that would be a problem.
“Around the World in 80 Days might work for Geography Boy. I was also getting him into The Amazing Race because of the teams featured someone with AS, but … well, that didn’t turn out so great. :(”
???
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??? for how it turned out? I’m trying not to spoil.
Laura, you’re right. I shouldn’t worry about the fiction/non-fiction divide but I can’t help myself. Lately when he goes to library at school, he picks out Alphabet books so that he can learn more about exotic animals. I am sure he knows more about animals that begin with the letter X than I do.
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Ever since we got our first car, we’ve listened to amazing amounts of literature 10 or 15 minutes at a time while driving around: Lord of the Rings, Dr. Dolittle (very engaging but not PC–gotta fast forward when he visits Africa), Wind in the Willows, some Oz books, all sorts of forgotten animal stories from librivox.org, etc. We’re listening to Alice in Wonderland right now. Some of these books are pretty forbidding in print, but go down more easily in audiobook format.
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As I child I loved reading about astronomy and planets more than novels and mysteries, but that all changed after I read The Phantom Tollbooth. It is hands-down my childhood fave. It’s pretty short and easy, but kids probably won’t really like it until they are ready to appreciate the language play, which also means that this is probably not really a read-out-loud choice.
“Un-Lun-Dun” by China Mieville is a must-read for adults and kids alike. Action, fantasy, danger, snide political commentary, language games, girl heros, a few b&w illustrations sprinkled throughout. What’s not to like? (I’m hoping it will inspire this year’s Halloween costume.)
The next installment in the “Mysterious Benedict Society” series is coming in October, too, although MBS books seem to be intended for secure readers. They are long and their plots center on characters who are unusually intelligent and studious.
Despite all this literari-ness, my son mentioned “Dog Days” too. Kids do love those books!
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We also love books on tape (in our case, for long baths). I’ve been hyping http://www.librivox.org, which has volunteers read copyright free books. It’s a great source for stuff like Twain, older Baum, and a bunch of forgotten stuff.
For around the world stuff, we’ve recently discovered the text (and librivox recording) of Nellie Bly’s 72 day trip around the world, done as a journalism stunt in 1890. (Incidentally, as part of the wax museum project my daughter’s class is doing, which I mentioned when Laura was talking about Jonah’s school project.) It’s fascinating stuff, and surprisingly readable so far. I expect PC issues to arise, but ignoring them isn’t the solution, anyway.
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PS: related to the wax museum, “celebrity” projects, ’cause my daughter has decided to be Nellie Bly for her poster/project. The range of choices is pretty variable: Pat Benatar! Sue Bird! Genghis Kahn? Mozart, Jane Goodall, Amelia Ehrhart, Juliette Gordon Lowe, . . . .
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The excellent Diamond in the Window blog (http://thediamondinthewindow.typepad.com/) recently had some good advice for fiction-resisters.
I was always very into fiction as a kid but the Landmark history series was also great as a young reader, especially the ones about paleontology and paleoanthropology discoveries. Can you even get those books anymore?
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