Classics for 9 year old

[GolfHours]

I read jane Eyre wen I was 11 and loved it. We went on holiday to the same rental every summer and there was a stack of Russian classics don't remember which ones and out of sheer borden I read them all --and enjoyed them- as a young teenager. Read Lord of the rings age, which I also loved.

But I haven't read much in the last 5 years due to having little time and mumsnetting. I feel out of touch with literature, can you please recommend some classics which may work for a 9 year old who is an avid obsessed reader?

Read Lord of the rings when I was 11 ..

I’ve just finished reading Five Children and It to a younger and less committed child, it was a great success. I think a good reader could get even more out of it by reading themselves, a lot of the humour lies in the author/reader interface which is tricky to read aloud. There are two sequels.

We also read The Box of Delights - that is a true classic - the writing of magic is like nothing I have ever read as an adult or a child. It is a sequel to a much less famous book called The Midnight Folk - a committed reader might like to start there.

I loved Arthur Ransome as a child, and again I have had good success reading these aloud. I enjoyed reading them aloud, he was a journalist and his sentences are well constructed and easy to read. We both were entirely engaged with the characters and the plots. I didn’t quite come away with that ‘classic’ feeling. But they are Old and Good.

I used to love the American/Canadian period stories: What Katy Did,
Anne of Green Gables, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
Also anything by Noel Streatfeild, although White Boots was my favourite.

I'm reading the first Moomin book with my 9 yr old at the mo (never read them as a child). DD is enjoying - she has already skipped ahead and read to the end.

Has she read the Little House books yet? And not really 'classics' but I'd say Chrestomanci books by Diana Wynne Jones have been v popular.

I'm reading my 9 year old Tom Sawyer. She's loving it and so am I.

The Hobbit.
Frances Hodgson Burnett books, such as Little Princess, Secret Garden.
Family From One End Street.
Street Child - a so called modern classic.
Treasure Island.
Robinson Crusoe.
Used to love Anne of Green Gables at that age. Also What Katy Did, and Little Women. Jacqueline Wilson has done a modern day version of What Katy Did, called, I think, Katy, so it might be interesting to read the two in tandem.

@MinnieMouse My DD has just read all of the Noel Streatfield books and loved them. Do you know of anything very similar?

Classics for a 9 year old:
The Chronicles of Narnia
Swallows and Amazons
The Railway Children
Swiss Family Robinson
The Borrowers
An Indian in the Cupboard
Tom's Midnight Garden
The Phantom Tolbooth
Just So Stories

I can't think of anyone particularly similar to NS, but as well as the books I mentioned, above I enjoyed the Swallows and Amazon series, Family at One End Street, Eva Ibbotson's children's books and all the boarding school stories (Malory Towers, Chalet school etc). I was also into ballet stories: the Drina and Sadler's Wells stories.

Heidi
Wolves of Willoughby Chase
A Little White Horse
Tom's Midnight Garden

@RiceKrispie have you tried “The Swish of the Curtain”? They have a bit of the feel of Ballet Shoes etc., with a group of friends starting a theatre company, and in later books going to drama school in London.

Eva Ibbotson and E Nesbit are both good shouts. Also 101 Dalmatians (and I Capture The Castle when a bit older).

The Green Knowe series is also great (much like Tom’s Midnight Garden and the later Arthur Ransome books, it reminds me of growing up in East Anglia).

If fantasy will go down well, Alan Garner is good, though I would leave The Owl Service and Red Shift for a few years.

Enjoyed Jules Verne and The Scarlet Pimpernel about that age.

@RiceKrispie what about the Lorna Hill Saddler's Wells books?

DS is reading Narnia at the moment. He also likes the Greek myths.

E Nesbit books are fab. A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley, Moondial (Helen Cresswell? can't remember), Drina books by Jean Estoril, Charlotte Sometimes

Philippa Pearce was my favourite and my dcs also enjoyed them - A Dog So Small, Minnow on the Say, Tom's Midnight Garden.

Following

Watership Down
Wind in the Willows

Also Goodnight Mr Tom

My favourite at that age were ‘A Little Princess’, ‘The Secret Garden’, ‘The Railway Children’ and ‘Annie’
I also loved the Harry Potter books having read them from around that age and Darren Shan’s Cirque du Freak collection.
If ‘Jane Eyre’ style books are more your thing then try Anne Bronte’s ‘Tenant Of Wildfell Hall’ or the Eva Ibbotson books - I used to love ‘Journey to the River Sea’