I swear, I never learn.
This winter I managed to successfully wean myself off caffeine because it wrecks my sleep no matter when I drink it. (I sincerely believe I have this gene mutation.) Now, I only drink decaf coffee or caffeine free soda. Unless there is a lack-of-sleep emergency, that is.
Last night, L was a sleep trainwreck. She woke me up maybe four or five times (which is completely unacceptable for a 2.3 year old IMO).
This morning, I was very very tired, so I made myself a big cup of half-caf coffee. HALF CAF. That shouldn’t be a big deal, right?
So not 30 minutes later, I noticed I was feeling extremely anxious and shakey. For no good reason, I am a giant barrel of anxiety. And then I remembered the damn coffee.
Stupid coffee.
Now I am going to have to wait two hours for these damn jitters to wear off.
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On to other things, I could use some suggestions. M’s favorite books are the Junie B. Jones series. For a long time, we would read them together, one chapter per night. Now, all the sudden, she doesn’t have the patience to wait for that and has been reading them on her own. Yesterday, she sat down for about an hour and a half and read three of them in a row.
She has read all but maybe 6 or 7 of them now. I need to come up with another series of books to keep her busy. She has already read all the Ramona books, but she isn’t quite ready to read at the Little House on the Prairie level of difficulty yet.
I also hope to keep her reading age-appropriate subject matter. For example, I think she could probably read the Babysitters’ Club books level of difficulty, but she probably wouldn’t be interested in the pre-teen subject matter. She is also adamantly opposed to anything remotely scary, so Harry Potter is not possible yet (plus, I think it is still to complex for her to understand the storyline.)
Any suggestions?
My 6 year old cousin just told me that the Magic Treehouse books were her favorites. Do you ever shop at Chinaberry? They have a lot of unique books that you/she might like.
If she’d like the Babysitter’s Club, but not the pre-teen subject matter, then she’d like the spin off of that series that features the 7 year old sister of one of the girls: The Babysitter’s Little Sister Series, http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=281885 and a full list here: http://www.scholastic.com/annmartin/bsc/littlesister.htm
Judy Moody is a good series, I know kids that like The Magic Tree House stuff, and The Berenstein Bears has a chapter book series that I enjoyed when I was little.
The Boxcar Children are great books! They are not scary, but have more of a little mystery type story line to them.
Katie Kerchoo (not sure on spelling) books are also very cute and easy to read.
The Ivy & Bean series is fun and has less teenagery themes than the Babysitter series.
If she likes Junie B. Jones, she will probably also like Clementine and the sequels, Talented Clementine and Clementine’s Letter. Clementine is a lot of fun!
Does she like historical fiction? I was a big fan of these books:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Brain
James and the Giant Peach?
Sparkle loves the Magic Treehouse series. It’s about two kids who go on time-traveling, educational adventures by reading books in a magic treehouse. He can’t read them himself, but I’m sure M could. It drives me crazy to read them out loud because they are really written for early readers, and the plot is essentially the same for every. single. book. He seems to like the pattern of it, though.
I’ll be sure to check your comments for other suggestions. I’m suddenly finding it a bit hard to select good books for my five year old. The picture books are getting to be too “young” for him, but so many books are too advanced for him as well. I need to find more in the middle ground.
My daughter is on Junie B. Jones now, too. She also likes the Magic Treehouse series. It seems to be just a little above the Junie level though also very short, but there are tons of them so it might keep M busy for a bit. I noticed my local Borders has a table set up with a good selection of reading levels, so maybe M could pick something in her level that way.
I’ve started picking bigger chapter books that my kids can’t read themselves yet as what I read aloud to them. They really like Cornelia Funke right now (we’ve read Igraine the Brave and Dragon Rider) and I found a neat series called The Sisters Grimm that we’re going to start.
My students really liked the Magic Tree House books.
When I was little I really liked the Bailey School Kids books. Some of the titles make it seem like they have scary characters, but I was a scaredy cat kid and I loved them. The characters must be silly instead of scary.
My sister liked the Amber Brown books. I remember them being very similar to the Junie B. Jones books. I could be way off though; it’s been a long time since I’ve read either series.
Magic Tree House series was a big hit in my house. They also have research books that go with many of the books – they are more non-fiction and are a bit harder (but not much) than the books. Berenstain Bears has a series of chapter books (short) that are also good. Boxcar Children series has a ton of books (over 100) that my kids devoured – they’re a bit longer and more advanced than Junie B. I always got lots of suggestions from the children’s librarian too.
http://www.amazon.com/Children-Noisy-Village-Astrid-Lindgren/dp/014032609X
The Children of Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren
Oh yes, Pippi Longstocking! Has she tried those? I sure loved them as a girl.
I LOVED Pipi Longstocking! I had totally forgotten about her. I was going to suggest A Secret Garden and A Little Princess – they may be too old yet though. I remember the Encyclopedia Brown mysteries being good and not scary.
One of my favorite series when I was a child were the Shoe books by Noel Streatfeild. Ballet Shoes was the first one I read and my favorite. Another favorite series were the Mary Poppins books.
Yes, I was going to say Secret Garden or Little Princess or E. B. White or take her to the library when you’ve got plenty of time and let her browse, read some samples of some different things, and pick something out herself.
There are only two in this series, but my daughter and I enjoyed the Ruby Lu books by Lenore Look. I don’t know how the reading level compares to Junie B. Jones (we haven’t read these).
Maybe you should try this book about why kids shouldn’t eat dead animals or chicken feet! (murderer)
http://store.nexternal.com/shared/StoreFront/default.asp?CS=vegane&StoreType=BtoC&Count1=711223781&Count2=628364205&CategoryID=48&Target=products.asp
http://www.AnUrbanStory.com
I’ll second the recommendation for the Clementine books, and a starred recommendation for the “Judy Moody” series. Those are great. They’re an easy sell to Junie B. Jones readers at the library.
You know I have scads and scads and scads of kids’ books in my basement, right? Because I get boxes of review books and have been collecting them for years?
The Magic Tree House books suck. She will eventually read them anyway — why encourage it. They’re good history books for kids who hate history but as literature, they SUCK. I had to review one ONCE and never again, my friend, it was terrible. There are some books I won’t stop my kids from reading but I won’t buy them or bring them home either and Magic Tree House are one series of books that fall into that category.
Try the books by Eleanor Estes — like Ramona for an earlier generation. Also All in a Kind Family — very good. My Father’s Dragon and the two sequels. The “Shoes” series are good but if she’s not quite ready for Little House, she won’t be into those either. Although the thing is about Little House is that it grows in reading level as the series goes. So Little House in the Big Woods is an easier read than Ramona.
“No Flying in the House” is great and for about that age. And depending on her emotional readiness, all the kids in our world were crazy about Charlotte’s Web at that age. It was seriously all the rage in our playgroup. The kids who could read loved it and the kids who couldn’t had the CDs on heavy rotation from the library.
Finally, get a Chinaberry catalog. They list great books at various age levels so they’re a terrific resource.
I loved:
Lois Lowry’s All About Sam series. That would be pretty much perfect for her age. Right on par with Ramona. The next step up would be the Anastasia Krupnik series. Also great.
The Superfudge books by Judy Blume.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books by Betty MacDonald.
Betsy-Tacy, and Tib series by Maud Hart Lovelace.
Roald Dahl has some that would fit her age. Matilda, BFG, some of those. Though his can get scary. BFG would probably be too much.
Anyways, there’s a few.
Oooh, I second Dawn on No Flying in the House, I love that one! I just thought of the Boxcar Children series, too.
Pony Pals are completely insipid, but my girls loved them for six months or a year. Though they aren’t good read aloud books- you’d kill yourself from the plotlines, but for some easy chapter book reading, they’re good.
We read the Fudge series to the kids- Judy Blume.
Also check out Daniel Pinkwater for some funny read aloud books that even grown-ups enjoy.
Here are a few favorites:
Fudge / Superfudge / Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing
The Boxcar Children
Ballet Shoes / Skating Shoes
All-of-a-Kind Family Series
Harriet the Spy
If she like animals the “Animal Ark” series by Ben Baglio was a favorite of my daughter as well as the “Puppy Patrol” series. She also liked the ‘Cam Jansen” series by David Adler.
I would suggest Frannie K. Stein… my son loves them – as well as Junie B. Though he’s not been a fan of Cam Janson.
Alex is a fan (for being read to) of Magic Treehouse. I just ordered Pippi Longstocking and Mrs. Pigglewiggle, both of which I fondly remember from my childhood. The Ramona books are another series I loved as a kid.
I read a Junie B Jones once and couldn’t get past the atrocious grammar. I correct my 5yo’s grammar for a reason, and IMHO books for kids who don’t have all the rules down yet should model good grammar, regardless of whether it’s “in character.”
Thanks so much for this post! My son is ahead in his reading too, so while he is only six, he reads better than some of my high school students. I have the same issue in trying to find books that are age appropriate but not too boring or easy (he hates easy). Anyway, he just read ‘Nim’s Island’ and ‘Nim at Sea’ during the holidays. He read Nim’s Island because he loved it so much – even though we were out all day that day! He read it in the car, in the cafe where we had lunch, while I dragged him across the road. I am keeping an eye out for anything else like that – the books that have been listed here are great!
Yes! to All-of-a-Kind Family. I LOVED those when I was little. I also remember adoring a book called “Follow My Leader” (which was my mom’s favorite book when she was little, too) about a boy who goes blind in an accident and learns to work with a guide dog. The chapter with the accident is slightly scary, but you could definitely skip it.
The American Girl series are great books, my first grade boys and girls really enjoyed reading them. Cam Jansen is also a great series. Happy Reading!
Magic Treehouse Series.
Love your blog.
Am I the only one who noticed that the author of Junie B. Jones is named Barbara Park, and was therefore hoping she was Korean-American? And therefore Junie was Korean-American?
I did a little research, and I don’t think the author is, though.
I was excited that one of the Captain Underpants kids (there are two boys) appears to be non-white. Whoo-hoo!
I second the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle series. They are on a 3rd grade reading level. At 37, they are still on my shelf and I revisit them frequently.
My girl also really liked Amelia Bedelia and the tamed down Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
Fudge and Superfudge are also quite good.
There are the books you want to read to M, and the books she’ll devour herself. The books my kids were devouring at the time when Junie B grabbed their attention included:
Secrets of Droon
Flat Stanley
The Littles
Judy Moody
Magic Tree House
Magic School Bus Chapter Books
Cam Jansen
These are all series, and most of them are poorly written. But they’re great for building fluency, because they’re right in the sweet spot of accessible reading for readers who want to speed through books with familiar characters (and the speed is linked to the fluency).
I took to looking at the number of words on a page. The bigger the print, the more I expected the book to be read independently. The smaller the print, the more I saved that book for read-aloud time.
I believe, 100%, that both kinds of reading need to happen for as long as kids will listen to their parents read. Hearing books above your reading level prepares you to meet all the harder words and more complex sentences in your own reading. (This is all straight out of Jim Trelease, whose New Read-Aloud Handbook will have, in its latest edition, plenty of good recommendations — it’s kept on the reference shelf at our library.)
If you want to challenge M’s vocabulary during her independent reading, I recommend comics and graphic novels. All three of our kids spend hours transfixed by Calvin & Hobbes. There’s a new Illustrated Classics Wind in the Willows that is FANTASTIC. The Asterix series was completely over their heads but they loved it anyway.
Oh, and Captain Underpants is a hoot. They get re-read again and again.
My 5-yr-old is newly addicted to Geronimo Stilton.
I lost myself just reading the comments– I forgot how many books I gobbled up when I was little! Yes, yes YES to the Cam Jansen series (the early ones anyway; I don’t know if they are still writing them or not, but if they are I can’t speak to the newer ones), Encyclopedia Brown, the Littles . . . has she read the Borrowers books? Those are all series books that never really fell into the “formula” trap the way so many of them have. On those same lines, Pippi Longstocking is another great suggestion; the Boxcar Children books have gotten fairly formulaic but I doubt a younger child would notice as much, and there are certainly a lot of them. EB White . . . Roald Dahl’s Matilda is a real charmer . . . ooh, and I love, love, LOVE Jane Langton’s Hall Family Chronicles, though they might fall into the Mum-reads-aloud category, I’m not sure. I loved them when I was little and I still read them today. There are eight out now, as The Dragon Tree was just released in May. They’re about a deliciously odd family living in Massachusetts, very fun, magical and just a little silly.
The boxcar children is great, and so are any Enid Blyton books. Maybe not so much the mysteries like secret seven or famous five (may be too old), but those book of short stories or Amelia Jane books or the any of the ‘school’ series like ‘the naughtiest girl’ series, Malory Towers series or St Clares series.
My son loves the laurence yep gold mountain series. He has written so many books of various reading levels from picture books to YA books. Great books with chinese characters.