Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In school they read Roald Dahl James and the Giant Peach, Charlottes Webb, Holes, The Giver, Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry, Number the Stars, The Family Under the Bridge.

On their own my daughter likes graphic novels especially girly ones.

My son loves comic series like Dilbert, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, The Boondocks and has been reading them since 2nd grade. Can’t think of more recent ones.

Comic series like Calvin and Hobbes and others actually improve an elementary school reader’s vocabulary.

An article sampled some of the words used in Calvin and Hobbes. Some are repartee, vicarious, peripatetic, magnanimous, deferential, salubrious, arboreal, behemoth, annihilated, aspersions.

It’s easy for kids to read these over and over and just read random ones and eventually they learn the big words.

My kids adore Calvin and Hobbes. There are also "comic" (they'd probably be called graphic novel if they were published today, but they weren't) versions of various world myths by Marcia Williams that are really interested. I agree that comics can truly be quality literature. Not like the ones you buy at checkout at a grocery store, but the ones that run in newspapers.

Anonymous wrote:Off the top of my head (I was an obsessive reader and remember a ton of books I read at this age)

Harry Potter
Roald Dahl
Mrs Piggle Wiggle
Sharon Creech - all of them
Roald Dahl - all of them
Sideways Stories
Boxcar Children
Nancy Drew
The Borrowers
Goosebumps
Animorphs
Babysitter's Club/Karen little sister spinoff
Beverly Cleary
Dear America
American girl doll books
Judy Blume - all of them
Secret Garden
The Little Prince
The Westing Game
Alex Rider series
Sweet Valley High
Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles
Frindle
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Watsons Go To Birmingham
Because of Winn-Dixie
A Wrinkle In Time
Fever 1973
Holes
The Face on the Milk Carton series
The Giver
Mixed up Files of Basil E Frankweiler
Tangerine
Esperanza Rising
The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Anonymous wrote:My kids read a lot of classic literature and rarely read junk. Some of it is the same stuff I read as a kid and other is newer.

I've built up trust with my kids that I tend to recommend good books so they are usually willing to try my recommendations. This started during Covid when it wasn't possible for them to browse a library in person. Now they do sometimes pick their own books, but they also appreciate really good books and are open to suggestions.

Anonymous wrote:[mastodon]

Anonymous wrote:

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 actually mentioned the Happy Hollisters specifically because my husband's mother loved them, then he loved them, and now our kid is reading them. Three generations, loving the same pablum!

I remember rereading all the black stallion books (that I LOVED as an elementary schooler) in high school and being horribly disappointed in them. They were terrible! But 8 year old me thought they were the absolute greatest. Also Trixie Belden which my mother passed on to me — the first one isn’t terrible on reread but I only want one not the hundreds there are.

Anonymous wrote:

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 actually mentioned the Happy Hollisters specifically because my husband's mother loved them, then he loved them, and now our kid is reading them. Three generations, loving the same pablum!

Anonymous wrote:In school they read Roald Dahl James and the Giant Peach, Charlottes Webb, Holes, The Giver, Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry, Number the Stars, The Family Under the Bridge.

On their own my daughter likes graphic novels especially girly ones.

My son loves comic series like Dilbert, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, The Boondocks and has been reading them since 2nd grade. Can’t think of more recent ones.

Comic series like Calvin and Hobbes and others actually improve an elementary school reader’s vocabulary.

An article sampled some of the words used in Calvin and Hobbes. Some are repartee, vicarious, peripatetic, magnanimous, deferential, salubrious, arboreal, behemoth, annihilated, aspersions.

It’s easy for kids to read these over and over and just read random ones and eventually they learn the big words.

Anonymous wrote:

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.