Literature for 10yo DD

My daughter has also liked the Boxcar Children.  She read many of the American Girl books that are historical.  We don’t do many of the more modern ones.  She has enjoyed the American Girl mysteries too.  And she read many of the Carolyn Haywood books.  She really liked B is for Betsy and the Betsy and Tacy books (different author/series than Haywood) that are on the Sonight list.

We have done a few of the Beverly Cleary books on audiobook, but neither of my children have taken up reading them on their own.  I do see a few titles in the Sonlight catalog and some have gotten Newbery award/honor.  But I think it may be borderline twaddle.  My children have enjoyed reading many of the books listed as readers in the Sonlight catalog.  So you might look at that for some more ideas.

http://www.sonlight.com/subjects/readers/readers-4-5/

My son read all of the Happy Hollister books last summer at age 10.  Those are good too.

I love Elizabeth Enright books for that age. Thimble Summer is my favorite one, but she also wrote the Melendy Quartet (four books about the Melendy family) and Gone Away Lake. I second the vote for the Betsy-Tacy books, mentioned above. Also Lois Lenski books, and Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink is a lot of fun. All-of-a-Kind Family is wonderful for this age. My middle daughter, who is the type who would escape to the forest if she could, liked the My Side of the Mountain books, about a boy who left home and lived in the forest independently. I also recall her reading a series about a girl who pretended to be a boy and lived in the forest. Rowan Hood, maybe?

I’m not a huge fan of the Ramona books, but a Beverly Cleary book we enjoy is Emily’s Runaway Imagination.

I adore the Freddy the Pig series and there are tons of them, but they have sort of an odd sense of humor that not everyone would find appealing, I think. I didn’t know of them when my older two were young, but I’ve read several to my 6yo and sometimes we laugh so hard at them we cry. Other animal books we love are many of the books by Dick King Smith, like Babe the Gallant Pig, Pigs Might Fly, etc. They would probably be easy in reading level for your daughter but in story they’re great for any age, imho.

I tend to enjoy books with an “older” feel to them, so most of these might feel sort of irrelevant to readers who enjoy a more “current” or fast-paced feel. I’ve probably missed out on a lot of good books for this age because I’m drawn towards books published before 1950 or so. Bwa ha! I remember my oldest daughter at this age liking a series called Unicorns of Balinor, but I never read them and suspect they may be a bit twaddly.

One of my all-time favorite books for any age is Danny, the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl. It’s less dark than many of his other books and I just adore it. I read it repeatedly as a kid.

Okay, I’ll stop here before I get even more obsessive! This is one of my favorite topics because I love reading aloud to this age group.