Kids' chapter books
A shorter-than-we'd-like-it-to-be list of books that are decent
In previous posts we’ve discussed early reader and picture book recs, and next in the line-up is a list of chapter books (shorter and legitimate chapter books). Please share what you’ve liked - a lot suck! Too creepy, too ageist,1 too racist, too sexist, too dated, too vacuous, and... Australians: Blinky Bill is SO VIOLENT, why!?
I’ll preface this post by saying that this list is definitely female-protagonist heavy and low on e.g. dragons. Our eldest learnt to read much younger than the norm, and so we’ve been needing to find appropriate chapter books for someone who lacks the emotional maturity required to handle a lot of what’s out there. And, without any encouragement from us (truly), she seemingly suddenly hit an age where she only likes things for girls a lot of the time, which limited our selection of books even further, because she only wants female protagonists/relatable figures. Your kids may not have such restrictive requirements!
Books that I like + the kids like:
The Mercy Watson series. These are great because they are fun, gender neutral, don’t impose any particular agenda at least on the kids, and are well-illustrated. Good for kiddos just getting started on their chapter book journey - they have larger text and less words per page than a true chapter book.
Brambly Hedge stories. If you can still get away with it, these books are so innocent and quaint. Tales of anthropomorphized mice with English country estate vibes.
The Boxcar Children. These are longer, legit chapter books. I would have actually found these too spooky as a kid, but maybe the weirdness of orphaned children fending for themselves is lost on our kids. These are better written than typical kids’ literature. They’re old, so there’s an inevitable bit of cringe e.g. referring to young girls’ “pretty faces,” and the “othering” of (Native American) Indians. But good, hearty books for when they’re ready to step up chapter book reading a little. Thanks for the tip, Emily :)
Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree. I’m apparently the only one in the family irked by the image of the “saucepan man.”
Anne of Green Gables. The language is a bit too ye olde for our five year old to read independently, but a lovely, soporific bedtime book.
Non-fiction e.g. anatomy. I get a kick out of my kids enjoying learning about actual things rather than reading silly story lines (there’s a time and a place for both, I know). Usborne has a particularly awesome series of non-fiction lift-the-flap style books, as well as many other awesome options.2 They pack a lot of content into a very approachable format. We love them.
Books that are fine, that our kids like more than I do
Baby Sitters Little Sister: chapter book form. I was not a child who read the Baby Sitters Club, so it’s been nice to experience them through our eldest and see what I missed. Ours are also vintage copies - even better. If anything, the author was amazingly prolific (300 books within about 20 years - wow!), and I’m impressed that none of the books suggest the kind of fatigue you’d expect from churning out that much content (in a pre-ChatGPT era). This series, of the little sister, is aimed at younger kids (7ish year olds), so misses a lot of the inappropriate content about boys etc. But there’s still a decent amount of content I’d like to take a red pen to. Overall, they’re generally pleasant pulp fiction, and an easy way to wrack up reading hours. Heck, we even started a lemonade stand in honor of Karen.
Baby Sitters Little Sister: graphic novel form. These are also available for the original “Baby Sitters” titles. Super approachable for kids starting to read longer books more independently.
Zoey and Sassafras: people like these because they are about a girl who does science. And she’s black, too boot. And her mum’s a black female scientist, to boot. Great, yay for all of that, yay for progress. But it’s all too forced for my liking.
Billie B Brown and the Hey Jack! series: benign, fine. Of a shorter nature, so good for kids getting started.
Kids portrayed simply as defective adults.
These also don’t impose an agenda, unless, like us, you picked up a book about space from a second hand book sale, and discovered the declarative opening message in a grandma’s grandma-font handwriting “To Joshua God made this wonderful universe from Pa and Nanna”.