Recommend a book?

[resonant]

The kidlet is looking for books to buy a friend. What we know about the friend's reading habits: She's turning eleven, and she's all into the Twilight series.

So. Rec us meaty-yet-fifth-grade-appropriate books that are better than Twilight?

Comments

[china_shop]

I love Margaret Mahy's The Changeover, The Tricksters, and The Catalogue of the Universe. (Note: I have no idea what's appropriate for what age; the latter two of those have some sex in them, irrc. :-)

[sara]

Oooh, YES. I still love The Changeover (though there's definitely some sexual content in there, at least conceptually).

[maire]

Possibly 'The Haunting' for Mahy with no sexual content, I guess.

[cathexys]

I'm seconding whoever suggested CC (yes, I'd never say I'd write that :) My son read it last year in fifth grade and we've been giving it to a few of the girls who were all into Twilight and they liked it.

I'd actually not recommend Holly Black, because the books have contents that some parents might find objectionable (serious drug use for one, one of the parents having sex with someone's boy friend, etc)

i've been searching and reading twilight additions, and the ones I liked were, Claudia Gray's Evernight series (third one coming out this spring) on the vamp front, Lauren Kate's Fallen (and actually to a lesser degree Becca fitzpatrick's Hush Hush) on the angel front, and I just read Lesley livingston's Woundrous Strange and Darklight and liked both a lot! for the fairy version. [Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series is great fun, but the second book's at the dark fey court and it gets pretty heavy with the drug abuse etc. and the main charactyer's having sex in the first book already I think.]

Hmmm...other books people recced that I enjoyed was Annette Curtis Klause's Blood and Chocolate (werewolf and no eternal love with the mortal!) and Margaret Mahy's Changeover. Both are stand alone and didn't fully convince me, but I read them fast.

Percy Jackson and the New Olympians been one of my favorite gifts for 3rd grade up (you can get the first 3 together at a decent price). The kids love it and while it certainly smacks of HP copy, it's a fun read for them (and the forthcoming first part Lightning Thief is already in their awareness).

I asked a similar question and got...mixed results :) http://cathexys.livejournal.com/356222.html?style=mine

But that started my reading craze. I'm not listing the ones i didn't like. There's tons of BAD YA vamp stuff (worst I've read recently was the House of Night series and i really hated the much praised Bree despain's The Dark Divine).

Seriously, at this point, i feel like I can start a Twilight recovery book club. Girls who flirt with the supernatural and still kick ass!!! :)

[bayleaf]

Oh, I love Changeover.

[cathexys]

I think it came at the end of a bunch of later yet similar novels and I read it in one sitting on the train last summer...and it just felt...too short? Like I couldn't really get into any of the motivations?

I've actually LISTENED to a large number of these, and I think having to wait for the reader gives me no opportunity to skim, and I spend more time with the characters (and thus their motivations aren't as shortchanged maybe?)

[bayleaf]

Well, I also think that my relationship to certain books is entirely based on how old I was when I first read them. I read Changeover when I was in high school, I think, although I might have been younger. I generally devoured fantasy & romance novels, and this was a nice mix of the two. I do own it and periodically reread parts of the book, I don't think I've sat down and read the whole thing in awhile. And yeah, I do recall that it left me wanting more.

[cathexys]

nods.

that makes perfect sense!

i have books i still love even though i *know* that they're bad and bad for me so to speak :) and there are other books i hated as a teen and then grew into them.

(personally, i think hesse is someone you can only praise as a teen...and yet the glass bead game holds a dear dear place in my heart :)

[bayleaf]

Anything by Joan Aiken, with special emphasis on The Wolves of Willougby Chase series. All of those are peopled by very strong, nontraditional female characters who go on adventures and are extremely resourceful. A++

I'm a big fan of Avi's books, too. (Charlotte Doyle was my favorite - don't recall the full title off the top of my head, but it is one that I still own and reread periodically.)

When I was 10-11 yo I read Tamora Pierce's Lioness Quartet for the first time. Again, I still own these and regularly reread. Strong female POV character who becomes a knight and saves a kingdom.

Robin McKinley's Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond (can't recall the author off the top of my head)

I really enjoy Holly Black's YA books, although they do have a strong theme of 'adults are not to be trusted.' No more than many YA books, though, and if she's a reader, I don't think it is the kind of theme that would stick particularly.

Hero by Perry Moore (although the main character is male, not female, I absolutely loved this book and my friends are currently passing it around.)

Cynthia Voight has a ton of fantastic books about girls surviving difficult situations. My copy of Jackaroo is absolutely tattered.

Garth Nix's Sabriel series is great, although may aimed at a slightly older audience. I know I would have loved it as a teenager, not sure how I would have dealt w/ it @ age 10.

I also absolutely loved Mercedes Lackey's books @ that age, although can't reread them now b/c they are pretty poorly written and involve a lot of weeping. Still, they were gold when I was in the target demographic.

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin was awwwesome.

[cathexys]

You don't find Avi's books too preachy? My kid had to read Charlotte Doyle last summer, and while he read his way through 5 Pendragon books and the last two Percy Jackson in a month, I could barely get him to finish that book at the same time. And his two best friends had the same response. It might be boys, though. But there was another one of his they had to read, and it seemed similarly didactic?

[bayleaf]

I don't, no. Granted, It's been awhile since I read some of them, but I have nothing but positive memories of those. :shrugs:

[cathexys]

And of course saying I didn't like the books when you just recced them is totally asinine! I apologize!!!

FWIW, they do get checked out fairly regularly at the school library it seems...And my kid certainly has weird taste, I'm the first to admit :)

[bayleaf]

Oh, also - when I was in college I bought a book called Great Books for Girls, which basically recced authors and titles that had strong female characters. The book was divided up by age group and into fiction/nonfiction. It was a great resource for building my own collection of awesome YA novels.

[jain]

the Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Dealing with Dragons, etc.) by Patricia C. Wrede
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

[notemily.livejournal.com]

My standard list of books that are Like Twilight, Only Better:

Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause
Mortal Instruments trilogy by Cassandra Clare
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
Lament by Maggie Stiefvater

YMMV as to whether or not these are fifth-grade-appropriate, but if she's read Breaking Dawn she's probably not going to be traumatized by anything in these books. *cough*

This is more science fiction than fantasy, but can I throw in a vote for Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series? It's definitely age-appropriate, it's got a kickass heroine and some (clean) romance, and it's a great series in general.

[mllesays]

Seconding Uglies and throwing in Westerfeld's Midnighters trilogy as well. Those are terrific books.

[ecaterin]

*smacks HTML*

Well, obviously the awesome sarahtales's Demon's Lexicon is a must :)

Don't know whether she'd look down her nose at them, but at that age (and still in middle age :P) I loved Engle's Time quartet - those are wonderful and timeless books and keep me riveted every time I read them :)

And last but definitely not least, Ursula K. LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea trilogy (the later Earthsea books may be a bit disturbing to a 5th grade girl). Surely the best YA fantasy books in the past century :)

[ecaterin]

That's L'Engle of course. Why is code messing with me today? :D

[via_ostiense]

Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books (Discworld YA): Wee Free Men, Hat Full of Sky, and Wintersmith.

[via_ostiense]

Also, Malinda Lo's Ash, which is a retelling of Cinderella, and Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix. Both books feature female protagonists and are by women of color.

[farwing]

The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsly

Piratica by Tanith Lee

Ash by Malinda Lo

The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz

A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer

The Perilous Guard by Elizabeth Marie Pope

[maire]

I loved (love) The Witches of Karres! So much fun. Bit dodgy on the whole 'marry you when I grow up' thing, though.

[farwing]

Yargh. I had kind of forgotten about that.

[sanj]

I was all about Frances Hodgson Burnett at that age. I wore out A Little Princess and The Secret Garden. Oh, and My Side of the Mountain, by Patricia Craighead George - but that's got a boy protagonist, so maybe not.

Like Fox, I was also all over LM Montgomery and Laura Ingalls Wilder, but there are some problematic bits in those. Still, I think kids should learn to read stuff from other time periods and recognize problematic customs when they see them -- but that's just my $.02.

Speaking of problematic, I was also reading the original Grimm's Fairy Tales at about that age.

And oh! The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, by Avi, is one I bought in a YA frenzy a few years ago. Plucky American girl solves mystery aboard merchant vessel in the early 1800s. Fun stuff. Looks like they're making a movie of it?

[sanj]

JEAN Craighead George. Not Patricia. Whatever. Maybe I meant Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest series.

God, to get to read all this stuff over again for the first time. Lucky kid.

[pi]

It seems most of this has been covered well but I'll throw in my two cents:

The Alanna Series by Tamora Pierce as well as the Circle of Magic series.

Sabriel by Garth Nix (would be my highest recommendation for that age/reading interest)

Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar, more middle school level books, depending which ones you read there is violence and sex, I haven't read Breaking Dawn but I've heard rumor, so maybe this doesn't matter all that much. My suggestions would be Brightly Burning (as a standalone, it's a bit of a downer, as the main character is permanently in love with his past sweetheart who's reincarnated a as a horse). I loved The Last Herald Mage trilogy (starts with Magic's Pawn) at the age of 12, so that might be appropriate, but again, it's up to parental type discretion.

Aria of the Sea by Dia Calhoun was a fun YA girl novel about a girl with the power of healing who wanted to be a ballet dancer, it's a bit magical and I remember enjoying it.

So You Want to be A Wizard by Diane Duane and the subsequent Young Wizards series was a lot of fun. I particularly enjoyed listening to them on tape. I think High Wizardry was always my favorite, though that is the 3rd book in the series.

At the age of 11 I was introduced to the Vorkosigan Saga. I started with Cordelia's Honor, which is still my favorite even if it is a bit of a prologue to the rest of the series. Cordelia's Honor definitely deals with complex and mature material, there's a near rape, a fair amount of violence, and political intrigue. I probably didn't get all of it at the time, but I loved this book to death and Cordelia is still one of my favorite main characters. So while I'm not sure I would recommend it to an 11 year old, my 11 year old self loved it to pieces. Of course, this is probably *very* unlike Twilight what with being sci fi and perhaps more on the space-opera end of things.

Romeo and Juliet Together (And Alive) At Last, by Avi is a hilarious book. I remember it had me in stiches. It's much better read aloud (I read it with parents, and then later listened to it on tape), but I'm a very auditory person. This is certainly age appropriate, but perhaps a bit on the young end for someone reading Twilight?

And on the Twilight vein I second all the Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, and Sarah Rees Brennan suggestions.

[fullygoldy]

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. Ness was one of the Tiptree Award Winners last year (for 2008) for this amazing YA story. Book 2 came out last Sept (The Ask and the Answer - the trilogy is called Chaos Walking).

It's got talking animals! Zen buffalo! And! The Best. Dog. Evar. (All 4 of my family love Manchee) It explores/expands gender roles. It's got a creepy preacher, a cross-country chase, adults-who-can't-be-trusted, adults who are amazing allies, and the scariest, most empowering coming-of-age premise I've ever seen. LOVE IT! Way more interesting, well-written, and useful for RL application than Twi.

[vass]

I second everyone else's recs for Tamora Pierce, Terry Pratchett, Robin McKinley, and Diane Duane. (Tamora Pierce seems particularly appropriate for a Twilight reader, with her emphasis on sexual freedom with responsibility, reproductive choice, and careers for women other than motherhood.)

Nnedi Okorafor Mbachu's Zahrah the Windseeker is awesome, has a strong female character, and she probably hasn't read it before.

Catherine Jinks's Pagan quintet is wonderful. The main character's male, but there are good female characters. Pagan Kidrouk is a Christian Arab, born in Bethlehem ("Don't worry, sir, it wasn't in a stable.") and he's assigned as a squire to a Templar knight during the second crusade. The fifth book, Pagan's Daughter, has a female main character, but it won't make sense if you haven't read the rest. These are Australian novels, but I think they've been published in the US too. I should mention that they're nothing at all like Twilight, but they're so good.

And while I'm recommending books for eleven-year-olds, that was when I first read Brian Caswell's A Cage of Butterflies. It was published by Queensland University Press a long time ago, so it might be difficult to find, but I absolutely recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction. It's about a think-tank of genius teenagers who make contact with a group of 'autistic' younger children living in the same compound, who turn out to be not so autistic after all, and the teenagers' battle to save the younger kids.

[rian_aphasia]

I liked Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' books when I was in my mid-teens; I remember there was a lot of buzz about her at the time, because she was 14 or 15 when her first book was published.

[amalthia]

Psion by Joan D. Vinge (the Snow Queen was also very good) When I was 11 I was reading Dean Koontz and Stephen King...

[miarr]

I second all the Neil Gaiman, C.S. Lewis, Madeline L'Engle, Diana Wynne Jones, and J.K. Rowling mentioned above. However, I doubly second all the Pratchett recommendations. Start her off with either the Tiffany Aching books (awesome witches!) or the Johnny Maxwell series (awesome aliens!).

P.S. Might not appeal to a young Twilight fan very much, but just for the record (maybe a few years down the line) Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. \o/

[wintercreek]

Enthusiastic seconds (/thirds/whatever) for Diane Duane's Young Wizards series (start with So You Want to Be a Wizard) and for Patricia C Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles (start with Dealing with Dragons).

Also, Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is super popular among 10-13-year-olds, at least at my bookstore.

[perfica]

The Tomorrow series by John Marsden. Completed series, seven novels and I found them brilliant even though they're marketed as YA fiction. Told from the diary entries of 16-year-old female protagonist Ellie Linton and deals with quite heavy themes (invasion, violence, sex) so maybe it's one you want to put aside for a few years.

[maire]

Margaret Mahy
Robin McKinley
Andre Norton
Meredith Anne Pierce (romantic vampire novels that don't make my skin crawl with their sexual politics!)
Diana Wynne Jones
James Thurber (The Thirteen Clocks and The Wonderful O)
Patricia McKillip (The Riddlemaster of Hed is a good place to start)

There's a very good book called 'The Stones Are Hatching' by an author I can't recall.

[maire]

Just remembered. At that age, I was also reading Heinlein's kids books, again and again. There's some good stuff there.

[kaneko]

Maybe Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. I also really loved Cynthia Voigt's 'A Solitary Blue' when I was 11.

[mklutz]

The first two books in the Harper Hall trilogy by Anne McCaffrey (but not the third), The Mediator series by Meg Cabot is about a girl who gets hit by lightning and dreams the locations of missing children afterwards, anything by Diana Wynne Jones but specifically Howl's Moving Castle, Fire & Hemlock, and Hexwood. Also The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman.

[indywind]

I'd second the the recs above for select books or series by Tamora Pierce, Madeleine L'Engle, Robin McKinley, Mercedes Lackey. Lackey even has a vampire series, lesser known than her Valdemar stuff, now packaged in omnibus edition, see on Amazon. IIRC, there are some what you might call mature themes, onscreen violence, sexual tension, offscreen sex; there's also a relatively sensible female MC, and her male vampire romance object is a singularly decent guy--my recollection is, at some point the MC has to convince him that it's not abusive to drink her blood if she gives her well-considered informed consent. I think there's a theme of judging people on their actions rather than identities.

[indywind]

Children of the Night despite the lame name, was the best of the series.

[nocowardsoul]

Patricia C. Wrede - Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Mairelon the Magician

Avi - Beyond the Western Sea, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, The Secret School

Karen Cushman - Matilda Bone, Catherine Called Birdy, The Ballad of Lucy Whipple, The Midwife's Apprentice

Lloyd Alexander - Westmark, Vesper Holly

Lemony Snicket - A Series of Unfortunate Events

[bliumchik]

Looks like you're covered on pratchett and tortall recs. I was a big fan of Pippy Longstocking as a kid, but haven't read them since so I don't remember if there's anything you need to worry about in them. I mean, I turned out okay :P

I also liked the Halfway Across The Galaxy And Turn Left series, and Isobelle Carmody's Obernewton series (which gets VERY meaty eventually but I definitely started it in primary school).