Great Family Read-Alouds
for Grade School Age Children

The following list is of books that we think are well-written, intelligent, and enjoyed by parents and children. We have read most of these aloud to our sons - they helped compile this list and a few of their comments are included, in addition to ours.

Age range? Well, that's a bit hard to say. Generally, if a parent is reading the book aloud, it can be read to children younger than the age recommended for children reading to themselves. And, there's a difference between, on the one hand, reading something which a child might not understand but is worthy of their listening and, on the other hand, books which have content which may not be suitable. In the former category I would place, for example, the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, and some books by R.L. Stevenson, Charles Dickens, G.A. Henty, or Rudyard Kipling. In the latter category I would think of Little Britches, the Harry Potter books, and Lord of the Rings.

Nevertheless, we have roughly divided our list into younger children (6+ to 9+) and older children (12+). There is obviously a gap here and parents will just have to decide what is appropriate for their 10 and 11 year-olds. None of the books listed are really suitable for children under 6 or 7 except for those marked with  an asterisk (*).

There are so many more good books for children, but we hope that this partial list will be helpful to you. May you and your family find much enjoyment in reading together! The books are in no particular order.

For further recommended titles, see Pamela Fenner's Waldorf Student Reading List. She has also written a volume for high school students: Books for the Journey. Both are published by Michaelmas Press. We also list many books suitable for younger ears in our Kindergarten with your Three to Six Year Old.

Donna Simmons
donna@christopherushomeschool.org  

• Recommended books for children 9 and under

  • Trumpet of the Swan, E.B. White (neither of my boys liked Charlotte's Web; one liked Stuart Little, though)

  • The Little House books, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A must! The first three, Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie and Farmer Boy are for this age range. Other books in this series are really for older children.

  • All the books by Marguerite Henry: Especially if you have a horse lover in the family.

  • Minn of the Mississippi, Paddle to the Sea, Seabird, and Tree by the Trail, by Holling C. Holling: A great way to learn US geography.

  • The Boy who Saved the Town, Brenda Seabrooke: Based on a true story during the War of 1812.

  • The Arabian Nights: See if you can find a good edition of these magical tales, which include the original Sinbad, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and Aladdin (before Disney got its hands on him...!).

  • All the Homer Price books by Robert McCloskey: My boys loved these stories of what boys got up to in small town 1940s America.

  • * The Borrowers series, Mary Norton: Our younger son loved these. The books are about a tiny family which lives under the floorboards in a house, who are discovered by the "human beans".

  • * Anything by George MacDonald: Beautiful, soul-enriching stories. Titles include At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and Curdie, and The Princess and the Goblin. His writing inspired both C.S. Lewis and Tolkein.

  • Swallows and Amazons and its numerous follow-ups, all by Arthur Ransome: Good, clean fun with boats and no parents in Britain between the Wars. Highly recommended.

  • Caddie Woodlawn, Carol Ryrie Brink: The adventures of a pioneer girl in Wisconsin. My boys rate it highly.

  • Jungle Book (not the Disney versions!), and Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling:  Just So Stories are a wonderful and very funny collection of animal tales such as How the Camel got his Hump and is perhaps for younger children (older ones will probably secretly enjoy it too).

  • Astrid Lindgren is the author of the Pippi Longstocking books, a highly recommended series about an eccentric girl who was certainly a hero in my household. Another, less known work by Lindgren is Ronia, the Robbers Daughter, a firm favorite of my boys. It is for slightly older children.

  • The Cricket in Times Square and follow-ups, George Seldon: Who can resist sophisticated Harry the Cat, nervous New Yorker Tucker Mouse, and gentle Chester Cricket? Wonderful -especially if you can give Tucker a good Noo Yoick accent when you read it!

  • The Family under the Bridge, Natalie Savage Carlson: A tender story of compassion and friendship.

  • The Chronicles of Narnia series, C.S. Lewis: These make wonderful read-alouds with a thoughtful message. Some of the volumes were more popular than others in our family. * The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is fine for slightly younger children, the rest are a bit more mature.

  • The Wheel on the School, Meindert DeJong: The children of a Dutch village are determined to help the storks return to their nesting site a-top the school building. Interesting, exciting, and quirky.

  • Tree Girl, T.A. Barron: One of his few books for younger children.

  • The Wizard in the Tree and The Cat Who Wanted to be a Man, Lloyd Alexander: Funny fantasy stories by a master storyteller.

  • The Bat Poet, Randall Jarrell: Remember this classic from when you were a child? A poignant and moving story.

  • The Book of Virtues, William J. Bennett: However one might feel about William Bennett, this is a wonderful addition to any family library. The stories could simply be read to the children or perhaps spark some interesting conversations around the dinner table.

  • Owls in the Family, Farley Mowat: A hilarious story of a boy and his pets.

  • Honk the Moose, Phil Strong: Charming story of a 1930s Finnish village in northern Minnesota that gets a resident moose one particularly cold winter.

  • American Tall Tales, Mary Pope Osborne: Exuberant tales of Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan and others who shaped our expansive culture!

  • The Birchbark House, Louise Erdrich: A bit heavy at times - including a sad part where smallpox sweeps through the country. Beautifully written with fascinating detail of everyday life amongst a group of Ojibwe Indians.
     

• Recommended books for children 12 and up

  • The Tears of the Salamander and The Dancing Bear, Peter Dickinson: Fabulous stories, the first a tale of alchemy in Italy, the second set during the time of the Byzantine Empire.

  • The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Jonathan Stroud: Great fun! In the Harry Potter tradition but satisfyingly different (including a distinctly more jaundiced view of the character of the average wizard!).

  • Eragon, Christopher Paolini: Yet more fantasy, this one written by a former  homeschool student!

  • My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George: Adventures of a boy alone in the Adirondack mountains.

  • The Giver, Lois Lowry: A dark vision of the future - this is a great coming-of-age story.

  • The King's Swift Rider: A Novel on Robert the Bruce, Mollie Hunter: Fast-paced historical fiction.

  • The Thief Lord, Cornelia Funke: An exciting story evocatively set in modern-day Venice.

  • Watership Down, Richard Adams: The classic story of courage against the odds in a group of, well, rabbits. A complex and very well-told story.

  • Little Britches, Ralph Moody: This is a wonderful series, something like Little House on the Prairie but more boy-ish, later in time and a bit more raw.

  • Johnny Tremain, Esther Forbes: Danger and excitement during the Revolutionary War.

  • The Golden Goblet, Eloise McGraw: An adventure tale set in ancient Egypt.

  • Moccasin Trail, Eloise McGraw: Our son Daniel's favorite book for several years (before Lord of the Rings took that title). A pioneer boy is adopted by Crow Indians, and then reunited with his original family.

  • Four great books by Elizabeth George Speare. Three of them - The Sign of the Beaver, Calico Captive, and The Witch of Blackbird Pond - take place in 18th Century America. The fourth, * The Bronze Bow, takes place in Galilee during the time of Jesus and is a bit heavy.

  • Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain: We loved this book, but we couldn't manage Huck Finn as the portrayal of the relationship between whites and African Americans is just too painful. In Tom Sawyer one can get past it - in Huck Finn it was just too much.

  • Rosemary Sutcliff has done a fabulous job with stories that might otherwise be overlooked - she has re-written the Greek classics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, and has written a number of books about Britain during the Roman invasion. Titles include Black Ships Before Troy (The Iliad), The Wanderings of Odysseus, The Silver Branch, and The Lantern Bearers.

  • Brother Sam is Dead, James Lincoln Collier & Christopher Collier: A family in revolutionary New England is torn by loyalty to the Crown or to the newly-formed country. Some graphic violence and bad language.

  • The Lost Years of Merlin series, T.A. Barron: My son couldn't even find words to describe how he felt about these books - terms like awesome and life-changing finally came out. This series chronicles the life of Merlin and speaks to our sense of truth, beauty, and honor. Highly recommended.

  • Treasure Island, The Black Arrow, and Kidnapped, all classics by Robert Louis Stevenson: Not so easy to read, but worth persevering with.

  • Sing Down the Moon, Scott O'Dell: The tragedy of the Navajo's forced relocation.

  • The Hobbit and *The Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkein: We do not think that The Lord of the Rings books are suitable for younger children - although the great interest sparked by the movies led us to read them to our boys a little earlier than we otherwise would have done (likewise with Harry Potter). Tolkein's books are deservedly classics.

  • The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane: A classic about the Civil War.

  • Green Mountain Hero, Edgar N. Jackson: About the Green Mountain boys in Revolutionary America.

  • Amos Fortune, Free Man, Elizabeth Yates: A slave who was formally an African prince learns that true freedom is found through God.

  • Island of the Blue Dolphins and its less-known sequel Zia, Scott O'Dell: My boys were lukewarm about the first book but I loved it! A girl is left behind when her people leave their island in search of a new home. My younger son enjoyed the sequel more.

  • Rascal, Sterling North: My boys don't usually like animal stories because "they're always so sad" but they loved Rascal, the true story of a boy and his raccoon.

  • The Dark is Rising series, Susan Cooper: A rich but rather dark tale of immortal guardians of the human race, Arthurian legends, and three English children who stumble onto an ancient map. A forget-about-bedtime read. Highly recommended.

  • The Apple and the Arrow, Mary & Conrad Buff: The legendary tale of William Tell, hero of Switzerland.

  • Dragon Wings, The Amah, The Star Fisher and Dragon's Gate, Lawrence Yep: Highly acclaimed stories of Chinese Americans.

  • The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling: You might have heard of these books! Well written, very intelligent and funny, great plots - my sons reveled in these books. They do get darker as Harry gets older, so discretion should be used with the more recent books.

  • Wild Animals I Have Known, Ernest Thomson Seton: Some of the finest nature writing ever, by a man who knew an extraordinary amount about the animals he observed (mainly in the American West). However, he neither minces words not spares detail - animals are trapped, torn apart by predators, and in other ways presented in all the grim reality of 'hunt or be hunted'. Highly recommended for those who can cope with it.

  • The Prydain Chronicles and anything else by Lloyd Alexander: A wide variety of fantasy adventure stories. We particularly liked The Iron Ring, set in India, and the Holly Vesper series about a girl-of-many-adventures.

  • My Indian Boyhood, Luther Standing Bear: The childhood of a Sioux man born in the 1860s. Told in a matter of a fact way, it is nonetheless very moving and very informative.

  • Kim, Rudyard Kipling: Intrigue and adventure during the time of the British in India.

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