Chapter books to read to/with a reading 5 year old

[Kuriusoranj]

Sure this has been done before, but hopefully not recently.

My younger daughter is just turned 5 and seems to have taught herself to read. Family tradition is that we read chapter books to them from this point, so I'm looking for suggestions of books/series we can share.

With her older sister we started with the Faraway Tree and Secret Seven, plus a bunch of classics (Narnia, Secret Garden, Little Women, Alice) and early Roald Dahl. So we have all those, but I would like junior to have some new books too. So far we've done The Twits and Fantastic Mr Fox, which she devoured at 3 chapters a night, but we've postponed Matilda after a couple of pages when it was clear she just wasn't following the complexity.

She likes princesses, unicorns and fairies, is generally very empathetic but has low tolerance of excessive naughtiness and scares. My preference will be things that don't make me want to claw my own eyes out so, for example, she can read the rainbow fairies for herself ta very much. Ditto anything with too cutesy animals.

Wise MNetters of the parish - suggestions please? We're foreign based so Mr. Amazon will supply all, so availability will not be an issue, although browsing often is ( they SHRINKWRAP books in shops here, how horrific is that?).

No reccomendations but I just wanted to say at the idea of shrink wrapped books! Why?!

I know, right? I love going into bookshops and having a good sniff, but not here. My way of choosing something from a completely new author is to read the first page, then pick a page at random from the middle and read that too. Can't do that here. Doesn't exactly encourage browsing.

PippiLongstocking, Olga da Polga, the books for younger kids by Dick King Smith.

My first chapter book was Charlotte's Web.

Ooooh yyy to Olga and Charlotte, which I'd forgotten about. We have both of those which is both good and bad, of course. Indulged PFB got tonnes of books so there will at least be plenty to pass on.

I'm currently reading the Ottoline series with my 6yo dd. beautiful series by chris riddell, dd is following the story bc one night I went out and she read the chapter by herself and correctly recounted what happened. It's beautifully illustrated. We will probably read his goth girl series next.

While I hate these books, the rainbow fairies series really helped dd1 with her reading. She is now almost 10 yr old and is an amazing reader, just beginning to identify authors she really likes and going to the library to find them. I think rainbow fairies was the making of her reading as she was an early reader, starting them towards the end of being 5yo and reading them by herself.

Btw, not sure where you are based, but we are starting to get lots of books at charity shops, as well as the library.

Sorry, earlyorming brain here, you've done the rainbow fairies, there are lots of horrendously similar books with pets etc by daisy meadows, I really hate them also, but see it did the trick with dd1. She didn't like pippi, any Enid blyton. Could try the worst witch series???

The Claude books by Alex T Smith are brilliant. They're about a little dog who goes off on adventures and they're very funny for kids and adults.

The Borrowers by Mary Norton. There are several books in the series.

And also The Rescuers series (Miss Bianca and Bernard!) by Margery Sharp.

I am at similar point with dd. Charlie and choc fac and bfg were huge successes over the summer. I am going to get her dick King smith and some of these others for xmas.

In two minds about rainbow fairies. Did you know that "daisy meadows" isn't a real person?? "She" is a corporate writers collective. Same is true for the beast quest book.

If you have a keen early reader I also totally recommend some poetry compilations. Like "I like this poem" for instance.

Mrs Pepperpot. Flat Stanley.

The Jill Tomlinson books - the owl who was afraid of the dark etc.

Andy Stanton's Mr Gum books are brilliantly funny but the puns etc might not be picked up by a 5 year old.

My girls decided fairly shortly after start of reception they'd rather read to themselves. Which was quite disappointing. Ds otoh is 9yo and still likes his bedtime story. What I have read since year R is, bearing in mind he has a particular interest in WWII:

Little House Stories
Some of Narnia (he particularly liked Horse and his Boy)
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
War Horse
Lone Pine Series and Nettleford Series(Malcolm Saville)
White Riders, Hidden in a Dream, Cargo of Horses, Punchbowl Midnight, Fire in the Punchbowl, Storm Ahead and the Nightbird (Monica Edwards)
Black Riders, House of the Peladin (Violet Needham)
The Player's boy, Players and the Rebels (Antonia Forest)
Cue for Treason, No Boats on Bannermere (Geoffrey Trease)
Demon Island (Cecil Baldock)
Little White Horse, Linnets and Valerians, Smokey House (Elizabeth Goudge)
Adventure Series, Adventurous Four (Enid Blyton)
Biggles
Goodnight Mr Tom
Blue Door Theatre, Golden Pavements (Pamela Brown)
House in Cornwall, Tennis Shoes, Party Frock, Children of Primrose Lane, Curtain Up (Noel Streatfield)
Chresomancy Series (Diane Wynne Jones)
Peter Duck, Winter Holiday, We didn't mean to go to sea (Arthur Ransome)

I have a good collection of children's stories from 1940s-1060s which he generally loves.

1960s obviously, not 1060!

Isadora Moon
Animal Ark
Dick King Smith
The Worst Witch
Milly Molly Mandy
The Daisy Series by Kes Gray

All popular with my five year old customers.

The Puffin Junior Classics box set is going down we my with my 5yo at the moment - things like The Worst Witch, The Hodgeheg, Hundred Mile An Hour dog etc. Plus Mr Gum, Rescue Princesses and The Naughtiest Girl In The School.

Shirley Hughes' - The Charlie Moon Collection
Betty macdonald's - Mrs Piggle Wiggle series
Eva Ibbotson's - books for younger kids (she does older ones as well)

My Dd was a very early reader & enjoyed all of these. I believe Dick King Smith has now died (?), but when Dd was little, she wrote to him and he wrote back! What a lovely man.

Thank you all - some great suggestions and lots which we haven't already got, as I was hoping. Ta!

How about the Princess and the Goblin (George McDonald)?
Or the Princess Academy (Shannon Hale)?

Neither of them are really about normal princesses.

The other thing that my daughters loved having read to the was Swallows and Amazons. My eldest has no tolerance for threat (when she first started reading Rainbow magic on her own she would want to be say on my knee to read stuff about the goblins) but she loved that book.