A few months ago a friend asked me for some book recommendations for her seven year old. So naturally I had to text her about 14 times in a row, with ideas. Finally I just pulled a stack of the ones we own off the shelves in Eleanor's room and snapped this pic of them.
I know I'm missing a bunch of great ones - this list skews to the classics, since those are the ones I tend to buy when I see them second-hand. So please, give me more recommendations in the comments!
- Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. Set during the Holocaust, so obviously has sad themes. A great conversation starter though.
- The Borrowers by Mary Norton. The first in a classic series about tiny people. I still sometimes swear we have Borrowers in our house (ours particularly seem to like bobby pins and hair ties!).
- All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor. This series is great. It's about 5 Jewish sisters growing up in turn-of-the-20th-century New York, and it's just a lovely book.
- The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright. Elizabeth Enright is such an approachably poetic author, and I LOVED the Melendy family as a kid.
- Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Who doesn't love The Little House series, right? Ma is kind of alarmingly racist in retrospect, but I still feel like I learned so much from her.
- The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. My parents gave me the whole set for a trip to England when I was 8 (for my aunt's wedding). I didn't even notice that our flight was 9 hours long, I was so engrossed in these books!
- The Moffats by Eleanor Estes. I honestly haven't read these books in 20 years, but I remember loving them as a kid. I bought several of them recently, and I'm hoping to read them with Eleanor soon.
- Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild. I just discovered these a few years ago (thanks to You've Got Mail), and I adore these books! War time England at its finest.
- The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene. Oh Nancy. I loved you SO MUCH. And if you get a kid hooked on these, they have like 100 books to read!
- The BFG by Roald Dahl. This is a pretty wonderful intro to the whimsical world of Roald Dahl, and probably a little more boy-friendly than some of the books on this list, ha!
- Trixie Belden The Secret of the Old Mansion by Julie Campbell. I loved the Trixie Belden books even more than the Nancy Drew ones... and I recently hooked the 8 year old daughter of a friend on them too, mwahaha.
- Superfudge by Judy Blume. Judy Blume is so much fun. I associate her books with so many great memories, and Superfudge is a great place to start. Fudge is such a likeable scamp of a boy.
- Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink. I know that Caddie Woodlawn is the best known of Brink's books, but Baby Island is so fun. It's about 2 shipwrecked tween girls who have to single-handedly care for 5 babies on a deserted island.
- Katie John by Mary Calhoun. Katie John is a hilarious tomboy, who gets herself into all kinds of shenanigans.
- In Grandma's Attic by Arleta Richardson. These are Christian short-stories, as told by a grandma to her granddaughter. I liked these a lot as a kid!
What did I leave off my list?
