kokotg Posted April 24, 2011 Share Posted April 24, 2011 I need ideas for my almost 8 and almost 10 year olds. They're both strong readers, and I'm finding more and more that I prefer to "save" books written for children for them to read to themselves. Either that or we've already read them. So I'm starting to turn to age-appropriate, not specifically for kids classics. We just finished The Fellowship of the Ring, and now we're starting Watership Down. I have a few other ideas, but I have a hard time judging how well they might hold the kids' attention. Any thoughts on Oliver Twist or Great Expectations, for example? Other books you've read successfully to kids that age-ish? They don't have to be just non-kid books; if you have a favorite children's read aloud for older kids, I'd love to hear them, too...I just feel like we've already hit a lot of the biggies from that category, whereas there's a whole new world out there when we expand past kid lit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laughing lioness Posted April 24, 2011 Share Posted April 24, 2011 G.H.Henty, anything in the Bethleham Books and Sonlight catalogs, Jean Craighead George, most of C.S. Lewis, The WilderKing Series, most of Madeline L'Engle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted April 24, 2011 Share Posted April 24, 2011 What a great question. My kids are younger, but we've gotten to this place where I know parents reading chapter books to their kids and those are the ones I want to "save" for the kids to read on their own, so I know just what you mean. How about Haroun and the Sea of Stories? Or maybe A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? Are they girls? Could you do Jane Austen? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kokotg Posted April 24, 2011 Author Share Posted April 24, 2011 G.H.Henty, anything in the Bethleham Books and Sonlight catalogs, Jean Craighead George, most of C.S. Lewis, The WilderKing Series, most of Madeline L'Engle. thanks! I have some Jean Craighead George around that I haven't been able to interest the oldest in as an independent read. I might try some as a read-aloud to suck him in... What a great question. My kids are younger, but we've gotten to this place where I know parents reading chapter books to their kids and those are the ones I want to "save" for the kids to read on their own, so I know just what you mean. How about Haroun and the Sea of Stories? Or maybe A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? Are they girls? Could you do Jane Austen? Haroun and the Sea of Stories is on DS9's school reading list for next year :). I haven't read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; I'll take a look. All boys...I'm not sure I can interest them in Austen until they get a little older and more...romantically minded ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmoira Posted April 24, 2011 Share Posted April 24, 2011 (edited) Summerland by Michael Chabon Sea of Trolls trilogy by Nancy Farmer Discworld for kids novels by Terry Pratchett Nacky Patcher and the Curse of the Dry-Land Boats by Jeffrey Kluger Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie The Little Grey Men (the hardcover from the Julie Andrews collection contains a couple of bizarre typos) and sequel Down the Bright Stream by BB. Brendon Chase by BB Edited April 24, 2011 by nmoira Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom@shiloh Posted April 24, 2011 Share Posted April 24, 2011 I would second the SL list -- lots of great read-alouds there. Also Veritas Press has some good ones. My boys have LOVED all of the Douglas Bond books (5 stars!!!) Chuck Black has been very popular as well. Those can be readers or read-alouds. We've done them both ways. Another author we've come to enjoy is Piet Prins. All my children loved the Shadow Series, written about the Dutch Resistance in WWII. Another Dutch Resistance book is Journey Through the Night by Ann DeVries. Some from the SL American history cores that we especially enjoyed were: Stone Fox (I laughed, I cried, I cheered) Little Britches and Cheaper By the Dozen, Carry on Mr. Bowditch and Johnny Tremaine. Oh, and we all LOVED The Great Turkey Walk. We read it over Thanksgiving break one year -- they could also read it by themselves, but there's some subtle humor they might miss. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris in VA Posted April 24, 2011 Share Posted April 24, 2011 I have to recommend The Dark Is Rising series, by Susan Cooper. OH MY, it's GREAT! The language is rich and beautiful, and the story is wonderful. I'm reading it myself so I can lure dd to read it! LOL I'd love to post a paragraph so you can see how marvelous it is, but it's hard to choose. The first book is called, Over Sea, Under Stone. I also enjoy Roald Dahl works as read alouds. Cinnabar, The One O'Clock Fox is a lesser-known Marguerite Henry (author of the Misty of Chincoteague books) book, about a fox on George Washington's property. I also enjoyed reading The Tale of Desperaux to my dd. And the Narnia books, of course. Have you read those yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmoira Posted April 24, 2011 Share Posted April 24, 2011 (edited) Are there genres you prefer to have them read, or that you prefer not too read? They're not to old for fairy tales or some of the more obscure myth cycles (e.g. you may have covered Norse mythology but not Germanic). I occasionally read non-fiction (or fictionalized non-fiction). We particularly enjoyed Totto Chan: The Little Girl at the Window. The Great and Only Barnum: The Tremendous, Stupendous Life of Showman P. T. Barnum Born Free Books by David Feldman Some DD the Elder recommended from her science reading: That Quail, Robert Tales of an African Vet (such things as cheetah sperm count are discussed, as well as some animal suffering, nothing I found inappropriate for not-sensitive 9 or 10, but YMMV) Almost Astronauts, 13 Women Who Dared to Dream Guinea Pig Scientists You could do themes, like Robinsonades: Start with Robinson Crusoe (and maybe a nonfiction book about Alexander Selkirk) and continue through Swiss Family Robinson, The Mysterious Island (this is one of only two unabridged editions), etc., and end up by watching some Lost in Space. :D Edited April 24, 2011 by nmoira Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stripe Posted April 24, 2011 Share Posted April 24, 2011 We particularly enjoyed Totto Chan: The Little Girl at the Window. This is a very sweet book. Don't be led astray by the uninspiring cover. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmoira Posted April 24, 2011 Share Posted April 24, 2011 This is a very sweet book. Don't be led astray by the uninspiring cover.Good point. The OP might wish to cover it with butcher paper. :tongue_smilie: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Critterfixer Posted April 25, 2011 Share Posted April 25, 2011 Kidnapped, Treasure Island and David Balfour by R.L. Stevenson. Silas Marner made a good read aloud, and A Christmas Carol by Dickens is a good read aloud for older children. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stacia Posted April 25, 2011 Share Posted April 25, 2011 seconding the Tiffany Aching/Wee Free Men (Discworld) series by Terry Pratchett books by Lloyd Alexander the Children of the Lamp series by P.B. Kerr seconding Treasure Island The Three Musketeers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cassiemc Posted April 25, 2011 Share Posted April 25, 2011 We are finishing up A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. It's slow to begin, but we are really enjoying it now! It's great if your guys like geology and dinosaurs as mine do :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stellalarella Posted April 25, 2011 Share Posted April 25, 2011 i just finished reading The Wind in the Willows to dd10. She was thrilled with the book and I was, too. His sentences are sometimes so scrumptious that we would stop to reread. That book, in particular, was fabulous to read aloud. What a vocabulary stretcher for dd10. For ds12, my husband recently read him the non-fiction book "Born To Run" by Christopher McDougall. I would come downstairs to hear that read--I didn't want to be left out. Now they have moved on to "The Greatest Generation," by Tom Brokaw. It Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stripe Posted August 21, 2011 Share Posted August 21, 2011 You could do themes, like Robinsonades: Start with Robinson Crusoe (and maybe a nonfiction book about Alexander Selkirk) and continue through Swiss Family Robinson, The Mysterious Island (this is one of only two unabridged editions), etc., and end up by watching some Lost in Space. :D I just wanted to add to this that Sidney Kravitz's translation is available for personal use at http://jv.gilead.org.il/kravitz/ . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momto2Cs Posted August 21, 2011 Share Posted August 21, 2011 i just finished reading The Wind in the Willows to dd10. She was thrilled with the book and I was, too. His sentences are sometimes so scrumptious that we would stop to reread. That book, in particular, was fabulous to read aloud. What a vocabulary stretcher for dd10. We're reading this right now. It is such a fantastic read aloud, though I find with the complexity of some of the sentences, it is best if I skim over it beforehand. We've also loved The Search for Delicious, any of the Roald Dahl books, A Christmas Carol, The Tale of Despereaux, and The Wizard of Oz. This year, we're looking forward to books like The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, A Single Shard, The Railway Children, Five Children and It, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, Children of Green Knowe (great series btw), the Dark is Rising series, The Girl Who Could Fly, and more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lori D. Posted August 21, 2011 Share Posted August 21, 2011 (edited) All JMO, and skip if these thoughts don't apply to get to the book lists below (LOL): We very successfully read some books aloud when DSs were of that age, and then, a few years later, the boys read them as independent readers; I'm thinking esp. an almost 8yo isn't going to mind a repeat 4 years from now. ;) Also, there are some of those children's classics that are BETTER as a wonderful family read-aloud, than saving -- and I'm glad we did, as when DSs hit about age 11-13yo, they really weren't so interested in reading some of those books I thought they'd love, so I was glad I didn't save them -- those books would never have gotten read! :sad: And finally, not every read-aloud needs to be above the DC's reading level -- sometimes it's fun to just share books they could perfectly well have read for themselves -- it's the joy, companionship and making memories of shared books that is important. Another thought: if you go for mostly Classics now, what will they read in high school? And, reading some of those works now may mean missing the great themes, the depth, the complexity that they won't be ready for until high school... Just a few rambling thoughts! :) All that said, I find book lists helpful: - 1000 Good Books (sounds like you might want to check out the upper end of the gr. 4-6 list, and the gr. 7-9 list) - Sonlight (try the read alouds for grades 5-8) - Veritas (rather advanced; look at the grade 4, 5, 6 literature selections) - Ambleside Online (also advanced; check out the book lists for grades 4, 5 and 6) POSSIBLE CLASSICS: - The Jungle Book (Kipling) - Just So Stories (Kipling) - The Wind in the Willows (Grahame) - The Reluctant Dragon (Grahame) - A Little Princess (Burnett) - The Secret Garden (Burnett) - Little Women (Alcott) - Black Ships Before Troy (Sutcliffe) - The Wanderings of Odysseus (Sutcliffe) - Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (and others by Howard Pyle) - Treasure Island (Stevenson) - Anne of Green Gables (Montgomery) - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass (Carroll) - The Twenty-One Balloons (DuBois) -- Jules Verne-like story, 1800s inventor - The Princess and the Goblins; The Princess and Curdie (George MacDonald) - Golden Key, Light Princess, Wise Woman (George MacDonald) - Cricket on the Hearth; A Christmas Carol (Dickens) - Tales From Shakespeare (Lamb) - Tanglewood Tales (Hawthorne) - Call of the Wild (London) - Mary Poppins (Travers) - Peter Pan (Barrie) - Black Beauty (Sewell) - National Velvet (Bagnold) - Kon Tiki (Heyerdahl) - The Little Prince (Saint-Exupery) - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain) - Around the World in Eighty Days; Mysterious Island (Verne) - The Sword in the Stone (White) And have you enjoyed these? They tend to either have older vocabulary and sentence structure, or, themes/settings that would make them at a middle school level solo read -- which would make them great read alouds for your advanced DC now: ADVENTURE - Hitty, Her First Hundred Years (Field) - Island of the Blue Dolphins (O'Dell) - The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (Aiken) - The Great and Terrible Quest (Lovett) REAL LIFE - Red Sails to Capri (Weil) - Cheaper By the Dozen (Gilbreth) - The Great Brain (Fitzgerald) - Little Britches (Moody) - The Wheel on the School (DeJong) - Life With Father (Day) - Mama's Bank Account (Forbes) - The Von Trapp Family Singers (by Maria Von Trapp) - The Treasure Seekers; The Railway Children (Nesbit) FANTASY - Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis) - Half Magic; Magic by the Lake, Knight's Castle; Time Garden; Seven Day Magic (Eager) - Five Children and It; The Phoenix and the Carpet; The Amulet; The Book of Dragons (Nesbit) - The Phantom Tollbooth (Juster) - The Never Ending Story (Ende) - Farmer Giles of Ham (Tolkien) -- short story - A Kingdom Far and Clear (the trilogy of: Swan Lake; A City in Winter; Veil of Snows) (Halprin) SCI-FI - Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet (Cameron) -- and sequels - City of Ember; People of Spark; Diamond of Darkhold (DuPrau) - The Green Book (Walsh) - Enchantress from the Stars (Engdahl) - Wrinkle in Time; Wind in the Door (L'Engle) HISTORICAL FICTION - The Golden Goblet (McGraw) -- Ancient Egypt - The Bronze Bow (Speare) -- Ancient Rome/Israel - Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow (French) - Adam of the Road (Gray) -- Medieval England - The Door in the Wall (de Angeli) -- Medieval England - The Master Puppeteer (Paterson) - 1700s Japan - Johnny Tremain (Forbes) -- Revolutionary War - Across Five Aprils (Hunt) -- Civil War - The Great Wheel (Lawson) -- building of the first Ferris Wheel in 1893 - Snow Treasure (McSwigan)-- WWII Norweigan children hide the country's gold - The House of Sixty Fathers (de Jong) -- WWII occupied China - Winged Watchman (Van Stockum) -- WWII occupied Denmark - Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Taylor) -- 1930s South ANIMALS (real) - The Black Stallion, The Black Stallion Returns, Island Stallion (Farley) - My Side of the Mountain (George) - Where the Red Fern Grows (Rawls) - Summer of the Monkeys (Rawls) - White Stallions of Lippiza (Henry) - James Herriot Treasury for Children ANIMALS (talking) - The Rescuers, Miss Bianca, Miss Bianca in the Orient; The Turret; Miss Bianca in the Salt Mines (Sharpe) - Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (O'Brien) - Redwall Series (Jacques) - Dr. Doolittle (Lofting) - The Tale of Despereaux (DiCamillo) Edited August 21, 2011 by Lori D. 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prairiegirl Posted August 21, 2011 Share Posted August 21, 2011 I agree with with Lori D that some books, even though my children are perfectly capable of reading them on their own, I think that they need to be read together as a family. 'Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" "Call of the Wild" and the Prydain Chronicles" are just to name a few. We read "Around the World in 80 Days' this year. It was slow going at first but we thoroughly enjoyed it once we got rolling along. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alicia64 Posted August 21, 2011 Share Posted August 21, 2011 My eight year old boys and I are reading Tom Sawyer as a read aloud. Some of the writing is "old world" so it's not a book I'd want my advanced reader reading alone. In other words I like explaining what the old words mean and discussing the philosophy behind what Twain is writing about. I agree that the Nesbit book we read -- Five Children and It -- was wonderful. Same goes for the Eager books -- Half Magic, Seven Day Magic etc. Excellent books. Alley Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LydiaG Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 We just read "Rats of NIMH" for a book club. I would never have picked this book for my kids to read because I saw the movie when I was their age, and it scared me. But, I loved the book and the kids loved the book. Our book club discussion lasted over 90 minutes, which has never happened before. It was not at all scary like I remember the movie. We are currently reading EB White's "The Trumpet of the Swan". Another book that we loved (again, as a read aloud) was "Flawed Dogs". There is a brief part about lab animal experiments, but I skipped it. Overall, it was a great, great book. I appreciate this list- my 8 year old son is currently reading the Percy Jackson series for thee second time, and I need to wean him off those. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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