Once kids become confident readers, you have a new challenge.
You no longer wonder how to help them read. You now wonder how to keep enough good books around to satisfy them.
When children love to read, they need a steady supply of worthwhile stories, familiar favorites, and engaging series they can return to again and again.
Here are some of the books I’ve used to keep elementary readers happily occupied with good reading.
Books for Elementary Kids to Read for Fun
The problem with having kids who read is that you have to keep them in books.
Here are the series I’ve collected or returned to at the library to keep my elementary student readers in books.
Start with
- Hardy Boys by Franklin Dixon (library books tolerated for occasional free reading at our house)
- Encyclopedia Brown by Donald Sobol
- The Great Brain by John Fitzgerald
- Hank the Cowdog by John Erickson
- Trumpet of the Swan and others by E.B White
- The Borrowers by Norton
- Doctor Doolittle by Hugh Lofting
- Sugar Creek Gang by Hutchens (too goody-goody for my taste, but we have about 8 of them)
- Secret Garden and others by Frances Hodges Burnett
When they’re older and need more, turn to
- Redwall books by Brian Jacques
- 100 Cupboards series by N.D. Wilson (intense)
- Boys of Blur & Leepike Ridge by N.D. Wilson (not series)
- The Archives of Anthropos by John White
- Freddy books by Walter Brooks (very funny)
- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaimen (I like Gaimen, but his books are seriously faerie-tale spooky – definitely pre-read to decide if they’re ok for your family)
- Charlatan’s Boy By Jonathan Rogers
- Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing by Patrick McManus (not written for children, but still humorous to them)
- Kidnapped and others by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Robin Hood and others by Howard Pyle
Plus we have a shelf full of Eyewitness Books that the boys love to page through and browse and copy pictures out of.
I’m just glad my boys have formed no prejudice about reading the same books over and over again! Remember and teach your children: real readers reread.
Good books do more than fill time. They shape taste, build stamina, and give children worlds worth returning to.
A child who rereads favorite books is not stuck. He is growing as a fluent reader.