Anonymous wrote:Lots of good books here. My kids have enjoyed some of the older ones though:
-My Father's Dragon trilogy
-Junie B. Jones
-Boxcar Children

Boxcar children is full of misogny. The girls cook and tend the kitchen while the boys do anything resembling manual labor. It's generally pretty fluffy, but I wouldn't call it timeless.

Anonymous wrote:The hobbit
The swan and the trumpet
The mouse and the motorcycle
The secret garden
Charlie and the chocolate factory
Junie B. Jones
Little princess

Uh what? The Little Princess is SO DATED and incredibly boring. Same with the The Secret Garden. There is SO much excellent children's literature being written now, there's no need to read things written at the turn of the century.

My son loves Geronimo Stilton. He’s also enjoying the Magic Bone series. The bone takes a dog to a different country each time, so he likes the geography tie in.

Additionally, the “Who was” books are a hit, although they are a little more advanced.

Anonymous wrote:Dory Fantasmagory
Mercy Watson
Anna Hibiscus

Dory is so great. The 6th book came out and my DD could now read it on her own, so I stole it from her to also read on my own. It's hilarious.

My first grader LOVED Howl’s Moving Castle (much to my surprise). He says it’s his favorite book. He did not enjoy the second book in the series and thought the third was okay.

Also liked:
Harry Potter
Wings of Fire
Gregor the Overlander (be warned some death and dark themes, though)
Wind in the Willows
Shadow Weaver series
The Girl Who Drank the Moon
Watership Down (more death and dark themes if your kid can handle it)
Artemis Fowl series

The hobbit
The swan and the trumpet
The mouse and the motorcycle
The secret garden
Charlie and the chocolate factory
Junie B. Jones
Little princess

- Tuesdays at the Castle
- Heartwood Hotel
- Betsy-Tacy (starts out a very young series and ends with the characters in high school, so we've stretched this out over time as appropriate, and despite being written decades ago this series doesn't feel dated to me somehow)
- I personally get sick of Mercy Watson because the title character drives me insane, but the spin-off Tales from Deckawoo Drive books are amazing
- All-of-a-Kind Family (except the last one, which I found meh)
- the entire Anna Hibiscus series (and if the part where it doesn't identify a country in Africa that the stories are set in bothers you, look up the author's justification for why she did that - there's a reason)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Off the top of my head, mine loved the Harriet the Hamster Princess series, The Borrowers, the Narnia books, The Hobbit, The Wind in the Willows, and The Incredible Journey.

Your kid enjoyed The Hobbit in first grade? What crap. Let your first grader be a first grader.

??? We read it aloud together. She enjoyed it. What can I say?

We also read the Hobbit to our first grader. We weren't sure she would like it and told her we would stop if it was too hard or scary, but she loved it. Still here favorite book, several years later.

Mia Mayhem has kind of a similar vibe to Zoe and Sassafrass— not the science stuff, but the same “special powers no one knows about” genre.

Chronicles of Narnia (forget if someone mention it already!) were a hit for my 1st grader- as was the hobbit.

Dory Fantasmagory series (both of my kids were hysterical with Dory’s imagination)
Clementine series (I loved how this kid struggles a bit with being herself)
Hamster Princess (this author uses a more intense vocabulary)
Ivy and Bean
Wayside School Stories

Judy Moody!

Lots of good books here. My kids have enjoyed some of the older ones though:
-My Father's Dragon trilogy
-Junie B. Jones
-Boxcar Children

Ditto on Ivy and Bean and Dory Fantasmagory. Those are both fabulous!

Mine also liked the Ellie the Engineer series.

I have found some good stories at www.storyberries.com/category/age-7-12-bedtime-stories/
NB: the stories are free to read.

Wild Robot