My 10 year old niece devours books and has read all the Harry Potters, the Dark Materials trilogy, Hunger Games, Lord of the Rings, Dracula, Frankenstein (and no doubt dozens more).

I’d like to get her a book for Christmas. What would you recommend she reads next?

James and the Giant Peach

My 11 year old is into exactly the same thing. After she finished the Hunger Games series, which she is obsessed with, she’s now moved on to the Maze Runner ones, and has her head permanently buried in them

Terry Pratchett – Tiffany Aching series:

The Wee Free Men
A Hat Full of Sky
Wintersmith
I Shall Wear Midnight
The Shepherd’s Crown

About a 9 year old girl who finds out she’s got the making of a witch.

Jungle Book

Skullduggery Pleasant was a firm favourite of both of mine at that age, as was the Series of Unfortunate events. Percy Jackson series was a bit hit and miss (daughter loved them, son not so much). Mortal Engines was enjoyed by both.

How about some classics like Swallows and Amazons or The Wind In the Willows?
Also, The Northern Lights trilogy

The Mortal Engines series are enjoyable. Well worth a look at. Also some more classics like The Silver Sword perhaps…

+1 for Percy Jackson

+1 for Lemony Snickets, Series of Unfortunate Events, a fun read and very entertaining!

famous 5/secret seven.. all this murder death kill has its place and the bookshelf of a 10 year old is not one of them.. old enid could spin a yarn and the stories still hold good today.. right, wrong, friendships and fish and chips.. all a 10 year old needs.

My 10 year not such an avid reader, but currently absolutely enjoying “The Last Wild” series by Piers Torday

totalshell – Have you just been beamed here from the 1950’s? 😆

My daughter, who I doubt is much different from any other 11 year old, would consider Enid Blyton far too young for her. Not to mention horrendously twee. And if you bought them for her, I doubt she’d get through a chapter. She’d probably consider it a bit patronising and condescending to give her something like that too. You’d get ‘The Look’

Credit them with some intelligence.

famous 5/secret seven.

both mine found them unreadable.

Malorie Blackman is another great kids author.

Call me old fashioned, but I reckon that dystopian novels in the vein of Hunger Games, Divergent, Silo etc aren’t really suitable for 10 year olds.

On the other hand our 10 year old finished up with Enid Blyton a couple of years back…

It’s quite difficult at that age- the 10 year old read ‘to kill a mockingbird’ 6 months back- she enjoyed it, but didn’t understand some of the themes, but it’s been read now- I feel that it’s been wasted as a book, and probably should have been kept back for a few years.

I feel we should be encouraging the kids to read stuff that gives them a healthy outlook on life, rather than reflecting our own ground down and jaded attitudes (Binners, I’m looking at you).

Or alternatively you could avoid being patronising and condescending, and treat your kids with enough respect to trust them to choose the books they’d like to read themselves

Just a thought

Seconding Terry Pratchett. If she enjoys them there’s the entire Discworld series to be discovered over the next few years.

I don’t see where I was patronising or condescending.
In parenting we tend to make decisions for our children, as we see fit, and, where necessary, give them reasons.

For instance, my 8 year old thinks its a good idea if he plays GTAV, but I don’t, and tell him this.

My 11yo (yesterday!) loves the Percy Jackson series, was not so keen on the films though.

Any of the Terry Pratchett ones – start her right at the beginning and watch her grow.
Brilliantly funny, amazingly well written and a genius of a mind weaving the characters and worlds together.

You don’t see yourself as being patronising yet you’ve just clearly stated that books such as the Hunger Games aren’t suitable for a ten year old?

You should hear the way my 11 year old, who’s been reading these, and the ‘Dystopian’ Maze Runner series since she was ten, speaks about what she’s reading. She’s absolutely passionate about them. The worlds they describe totally fire her imagination. She raves about them. And constantly has her head in a book. And that’s really healthy as far as I’m concerned. She’ll sit there and immerse herself in her own world. Isn’t that what books should be doing?

I credit her with enough intelligence to make her own decisions (within reason obviously). We were having a good chat about it only the other day. She was (massively enthusiastically) telling me the premise of Maze Runner. I was telling her about Jeff Noons Vert and Pollen, but concluded that they really are too old for a yet, and we need to hang back a couple of years on those

You can never go too wrong with Terry Pratchett but if she likes distopial future fiction then I recommend The Testing series by Joelle Charbonneau.

I feel we should be encouraging the kids to read stuff that gives them a healthy outlook on life

Of the books to which you refer, Hunger Games and Divergent especially have pretty strong (female) characters, my daughter wanted to be Hermione Grainger, but can’t stand Bella Swan, and will give you a pretty good argument as to why…I would, every-time, want my kids to have as wide a horizon they can on books, rather than a prescriptive “outlook” that excluded books because of their setting or theme.

No one has recommended Silo, as far as I can see, but there’s nothing in that series that would give me pause to not let my kids read them.

Not just Pratchett’s Discworld; Nation would be pitched right for her reading experience.

Some of the Neil Gaiman books might be worth a shot.

Or our little one has ploughed through the two Darkmouth novels and really looking forwards to the third on in Feb.

I asked a similar question a few weeks ago and got some great answers from on here, heres the link..

STW Recomendations from a week or so ago

Thanks for all the suggestions folks 🙂

My 11yo (yesterday!) loves the Percy Jackson series…..

+1

David Walliams’ books go down well too, with my 10 yo daughter.
My son has read Charlie Higson’s books, but they might be a bit old for 10 year olds.

Agree with the Mortal Engines and Fever Crumb trilogy’s by Phillip Reeve.

Anything by S. F. Said (Varjak Paw, Pheonix).

Kenneth Oppel stuff is pretty good (Airbourne trilogy).

Phillip Pullman stuff is good – perhaps some of his smaller novels before Northern Lights

Gone series – all the adults disappear leaving the kids to rule
I am Number Four series

Both enjoyed by my girls about that age

Good ideas above. You could try her on ‘The Ruby in the Smoke’ by Phillip Pullman to see if she likes stories with similar fantasy / thriller storylines but in more real settings (in this case Victorian England). I would also go for Pratchett or Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy to see if she gets the humour.

Not suitable yet (bit sweary) but books like the Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window would be good to see if it perks her interest in real history and to see what kind of humour she gets.

For something very different (not fantasy but still problem solving) something like Alexander McCall Smith (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency) might work.

Un Lun Dun – China Mieville
The Thief of Always – Clive Barker
Stardust – Neil Gaiman
Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman

All great books.

The Spiderwick CHronicles.
The Borribles.
The Enemy Series(Charlie Higson)
Various Diane Wynn Jones books.

Pretty much all of Gaiman’s books, Coraline is excellent, as is the film.
I’ve recommended her books plenty of times, and I’ll do so again: Catherine Webb wrote a whole bunch of YA books, plus others under the names of Kate Griffin and Claire North. Bear in mind her first book, Mirror Dreams, which is very similar in style to one of my favourite authors, Roger Zelazny, was written when Cat was fourteen, and published the following year!
It’s easier to give her Wiki link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Webb
I’d be perfectly happy for a ten-yo child of mine to read all of Cat’s books. She’s just published three ebook novellas as well, for Kindle and iBooks.
She’s a theatre lighting designer and technician by trade, writes on her laptop during long periods of inactivity while the actors and directors are yakking about stuff.