The Boxcar children premise drove me nuts re-reading it with my daughter. #1: WTF happened to the parents?!! #2: how did they have this wonderful, rich grandfather who lived maybe one town over that they never met? And who randomly came across them?

I realize the plot holes aren't the point. Don't get me started on why Harry has to go to the Dursleys to be abused every summer....

Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, whatever book cover caught my eye.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of the books I read as a kid featured orphans as main characters, I’m now realizing. Boxcar kids. Secret Garden. BFG. Anne of Green Gables. Heidi. And on and on.

LOL - yes same. All of these. Or terrible parents -- Matilda.

It's a trope in children's lit for a reason. When the parents are dead, or so bad they aren't involved, or absent (see the many books where a parent is deployed during a war) then the children have reasons to do things your kids and mine probably wouldn't do: live in a Boxcar, spend summers between Hogwarts terms all over the place, live with crochety old relatives in the mountains, and so on. Parents make the world a safer place, and in literature kids want a chance to live a little more on the edge.

It's an interesting question if you can write a book where the parents are major players, but the kids still have crazy, just-scary-enough adventures.

Anonymous wrote:All of the books I read as a kid featured orphans as main characters, I’m now realizing. Boxcar kids. Secret Garden. BFG. Anne of Green Gables. Heidi. And on and on.

LOL - yes same. All of these. Or terrible parents -- Matilda.

Anonymous wrote:I was and am a huge reader. So are my kids. My oldest only read graphic novels and the Warriors series, for the most part, until 4th grade, when they got prizes for reading a certain number of award winning books. I think reading is reading. Dogman is actually super clever -so is Investi-gators. When reading is a joy and not a chore, they will transition to reading "good" books on their own. You can also still read to them at night to expose them to more literary books. Now my kids come home recommending authors to me, and I have read a lot of great YA fiction lately!

Disagree with the bolded, unless they get exposed via things like readalouds. You yourself incentivized your kids to read better books. If OP wants her kid to read better, books, OP can do the same.

I was and am a huge reader. So are my kids. My oldest only read graphic novels and the Warriors series, for the most part, until 4th grade, when they got prizes for reading a certain number of award winning books. I think reading is reading. Dogman is actually super clever -so is Investi-gators. When reading is a joy and not a chore, they will transition to reading "good" books on their own. You can also still read to them at night to expose them to more literary books. Now my kids come home recommending authors to me, and I have read a lot of great YA fiction lately!

I read all the Happy Hollister books. Upon rereading I see the sexism and racism. I loved them, though. I read everything I could get. My daughter read everything from all the Junie B. Jones on. As long as they read, don’t worry about it. If you want them to read certain books, get them in the house and read to them, as well. I read everything from People magazine to bestsellers. It doesn’t matter. You just want them to read. My kid is a college graduate with a degree in creative writing, and I am a teacher.

All of the books I read as a kid featured orphans as main characters, I’m now realizing. Boxcar kids. Secret Garden. BFG. Anne of Green Gables. Heidi. And on and on.

I was a voracious reader, and read a lot of different books- everything from the junky series like sweet valley twins and babysitters club to the classics. I think it’s good to change it up and read a diversity of genres. With my second grader , I just want him to LIKE reading, as he experienced a lot of frustration early on (thanks in part to the three-cueing they were teaching him in school). Seeing him now read magic treehouse and dog man on his own is great. I’ve been reading Roald Dahl and Beverly clearly to him and he enjoys those too.

OP, here are some series for young readers you can try encouraging:

- Billy and Blaze (longer form picture books)
- Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain (same as above)
- The Mouse and the Motorcycle
- Henry Huggins
- Mercy Watson
- Dodsworth (probably a lower reading level than your kid, but sometimes kids like to fall back to something easy)
- Encyclopedia Brown
- Ranger in Time

To get your kid into a book you love, start by reading at least some of it (or the first book of a series) aloud. It'll help hook him.

Anonymous wrote:Stop with the Dog Man slander. They are recommending those books because they are fantastic and get kids into reading.

I read every single kids book at the county library when I was a kid, so I guess my answer to the original question is everything that was available. My elementary age kid read dog man and the ones you’ve mentioned, in addition to hatchet, Fahrenheit 451, almost all Brandon Sanderson books (which include many novels that are over 1000 pages), all Dahl books, wings of fire, and many others. Some of these he read with my husband, most of them he read alone. I have no idea what the school recommended.

I think literacy is like dieting. Change and growth is going to go better when you add in good things rather than just subtracting bad things.

My 6th grader and I both love Sanderson. His books are great!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids like repetitive books. I remember Goosebumps and the My Teacher Is An Alien and Babysitter Little Sister and American Girl books being obsessively read in my elementary school. Get them hooked on stuff you like, but if you can find something with a long slightly repetitive series you’ll have better luck displacing the magic treehouses of the world.

I distinctly remember the age where I realized all the Redwall books I adored were actually virtually identical books. I try to read my kid Good Books, but I also don't begrudge her her crap. Older generations had their formulaic Hardy Boys and Happy Hollisters and this generation has Dogman. Most adults don't read only great literature either.

This.

Stop with the Dog Man slander. They are recommending those books because they are fantastic and get kids into reading.

I read every single kids book at the county library when I was a kid, so I guess my answer to the original question is everything that was available. My elementary age kid read dog man and the ones you’ve mentioned, in addition to hatchet, Fahrenheit 451, almost all Brandon Sanderson books (which include many novels that are over 1000 pages), all Dahl books, wings of fire, and many others. Some of these he read with my husband, most of them he read alone. I have no idea what the school recommended.

I think literacy is like dieting. Change and growth is going to go better when you add in good things rather than just subtracting bad things.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids like repetitive books. I remember Goosebumps and the My Teacher Is An Alien and Babysitter Little Sister and American Girl books being obsessively read in my elementary school. Get them hooked on stuff you like, but if you can find something with a long slightly repetitive series you’ll have better luck displacing the magic treehouses of the world.

I distinctly remember the age where I realized all the Redwall books I adored were actually virtually identical books. I try to read my kid Good Books, but I also don't begrudge her her crap. Older generations had their formulaic Hardy Boys and Happy Hollisters and this generation has Dogman. Most adults don't read only great literature either.

+1. I remember reading Happy Hollisters as a kid and loving it (I'm not actually that old, we found it in some used bookstore somewhere). My mom gave it to me and I looked through it again and was pretty horrified. The kids were so mean! It was so poorly written!

I’ve never heard of it, but based on the excerpt I found online… it is high literature compared to what’s popular now.

I read equally garbage books at that age (why my elementary school library was stocked with Sweet Valley High I have no idea) so I try not to judge my kids too harshly. I just try to make what I think are better options available to them and it seems to be working okay.

I personally find the TV/videogame tie in stuff annoying. I read exactly one Minecraft "novel" to my youngest and told him he'd have to wait until he could read it himself if he wanted more because that was tedious. I absolutely get why they exist, but woof.