My 7-year old daughter is a voracious reader. With a lot of indoor time due to COVID restrictions, she has read through a lot of stuff and I am looking for other books she might be interested in reading. We cannot browse our library’s shelves as we used to do in the before times. Our libraries are operating only a pickup service which means you really need to know what you want to check out to take advantage of it.
There has probably read every Robert Munsch story. She love’s Mo Willem’s Elephant and Piggy series as well as the pigeon books. The Owl Diaries and Unicorn Diaries by Rebecca Elliot is another favourite. And she also enjoys Narwhal and Jelly by Ben Clanton.
Any recommendations for similar types of books or authors?
Definitely get your hands on the Tashi books. They might be a little above her reading level at the moment, but you’ll be glad you have them when she’s ready for them. They are clever and imaginative fantasy stories that are just packed with charm and humor. You can buy them in these large compilations, but they’re actually a series of shorter stories, the perfect bedtime story length. They get my highest recommendation–one of the best things I ever bought for our kids.
She just doesn’t like Paddington. We have a collection and I’ve read the stories to her but they just don’t seem to click with her. She does really like Pete the Cat and we have several. She has read Little Critters before and was just so so with that but that was when she was younger. I think she might be more amenable to it now.
A lot of the books published by Branches (who do Owl Diaries, etc.) are good. Princess Pink and the Land of Fake Believe are similarly silly and good fun. My daughter also enjoyed Notebook of Doom. Browse their website and scope out anything that looks interesting.
Other things include:
Zoey and Sassafras: a girl who is a vet for magical animals
Chirri and Chirra series: gentle Ghibli-esque imagination adventures with beautiful watercolor illustration.
Princess in Black: Shannon Hale penned superhero/princess books. Shannon Hale has a bunch of stuff in various formats (like a kids Wonder Woman comic) that are all pretty good.
Hilda: adventure graphic novels in a Scandinavian fairy tale world that have been turned into a Netflix series. There’s a bit of peril and it’s scary at times, so it depends on her capacity for that kind of thing.
Dog Man: similar-ish to Narwhal, silly comic book humor.
Bird and Squirrel: very silly odd couple adventure comics.
Shinsuke Yoshitake has a number of very silly and charming books.
There are some picture books by Mac Barnett/Jon Klassen which are great, as does Corey Tabor.
This might be a really good one for her. She loves animals and Hope for Wildlife (an animal rescue and rehab TV series) is something she watches rather obsessively (maybe too obsessively, but I can’t blame her 'cuz them obsessive genes came from daddy).
There’s a couple of chapter book series called Rescue Princesses and Critter Club that might be a little above her level, but would be good once she’s ready for books that are mostly text or text only.
My almost seven year old daughter loves the Dory Fantasmagory books and they’ve become favorites for us at bedtime as well. Dory’s the youngest of three, semi-neglected and thus has a wild and funny imagination like a lot of kids do. I think maybe my daughter responds to her because she feels like a real kid.
Hah, we have literally hundreds of children’s books, bit when my daughter’s school did a realistic fiction unit, we had to dig around and eventually found, like, one Judy Moody book. It’s all fairies, magic, and talking animals in our house.
My younger daughter enthusiastically recommends the following (some of which may be slightly above your daughter’s level or slightly below, depending on exactly what level she’s reading at). These are all “chapter books” although some have illustrations throughout, too:
The Candymakers (series), by Wendy Mass Emily Windsnap (series) and Philippa Fisher (series) and Has Anyone Seen Jessica Jenkins by Liz Kessler Wishtree by Katherine Applegate (I think she has more books, and both of my kids loved her stuff from what I recall) NERDS (National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society) (series) by Michael Buckley
My younger daughter was an indifferent reader (she was good at it, but didn’t like it) until she encountered the Emily Windsnap books.
My daughters (8 & 10) love reading. They’re super into The Warriors series (about cat clans in the woods) and the Wings of Fire series, but will read pretty much anything. They were super into graphic novels for a while and loved Space Dumplins
One of the best things we did was to get them a copy of this book, which they have loved and loved and loved on for many years:
We’ve let them read whatever interests them. My 10 yr old just finished the Hunger Games series and read The Girl with All the Gifts last year, but she’s my horror movie buddy, so your mileage may vary there. :)
My 8 year old is super into Warrior cats as well. She hasn’t gone into to Wings of Fire, but has read the Dragon Masters, which are I think a bit younger. They’re pretty tedious (basically identical with the dragon having different elemental powers each time), but she likes them. Most kids series are pretty tedious, tbh, so that isn’t saying much though.
We’ve been reading some Lloyd Alexander and Diana Wynn Jones recently as bedtime books.
