Name: Spreading the Feast Gathering
Start: 2025-07-11T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-07-12T23:59:59-05:00
Location: LaGrange, KY

This topic has 8 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 10 months ago by Julie.

Viewing 9 posts - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

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August 20, 2015 at 10:06 pm
Julie
Participant
Hi,
My dd is 10 and will be starting 4th grade (late b-day). She reads very well, but does not pick up a book on her own to read. She will read if I assign it everyday. I love to read, so this frustrates me. She loves for me to read aloud to her. Anyway, my question is, what are some books that would be interesting to a 10 yo girl? She loves biographies and has read several of the Who Was…series. I would like to get her into some different books. I’ve looked at the Beverly Cleary books….Are they considered “twaddle”?
Thanks for any help and suggestions..:))

Julie
August 20, 2015 at 10:31 pm
Kristen
Participant
I have a DS11 who is the same way. I search and search for books that might interest him. It’s such a struggle. I also have a 10 year old girl. She loves the Boxcar Children and while she can read well above that level I let her read them because she likes them so much. Others she has liked; Island of the Blue Dolphin, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and Hatchet are a couple. I might suggest Anne of Green Gables but both I and my DD12 couldn’t get through that because we thought it rambled on and on so. (I always hear how good it is but we can’t stand it). Has she read the Little House series on her own? The Witch of Blackbird Pond is another.
August 21, 2015 at 12:55 am
Wings2fly
Participant
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/

August 21, 2015 at 9:37 am
caedmyn
Participant
My 9 YO loves any Marguerite Henry books, American Girl books, and individual Thornton W Burgess titles (Blacky the Crow etc). The Happy Hollisters series is another one she enjoys. Idk if they would be considered living books but they have good values and are fun…I have fond memories of reading them as kids.
August 21, 2015 at 10:59 am
Wings2fly
Participant
My son read all of the Happy Hollister books last summer at age 10. Those are good too.
August 21, 2015 at 3:01 pm
Karen
Participant
My oldest dd, at age 10 was really enjoying Andrew Clement’s books…..actually, we all enjoy them by getting audiobooks from the library. But she read a number of them, too.
Avi’s Dimwood Forest Tales (I’m not sure of the exact title of the series) is another set of books she asked for for her birthday.
Caddie Woodlawn was another book she enjoyed.
August 21, 2015 at 5:45 pm
alphabetika
Participant
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.
August 21, 2015 at 5:55 pm
alphabetika
Participant
Okay, I’m back already. I just reread your post and saw what you said about biographies. I wonder if the Childhood of Famous Americans series would be appealing? I haven’t seen one in awhile and I feel like they might be an easier read, but there are lots of them and they’d really enhance American history learning.
August 21, 2015 at 8:40 pm
Julie
Participant
Thank you ladies for all the great information! I’m going to check into all the suggestions and see what I can find.
@wings2fly….I do have a SL catalog and she has read quiet a bit from that, but for some reason we’ve seemed to hit a slump.