Suitable books for quite an innocent 12yo girl whose a very good reader

[MirkleMe]

My 12yo DD is capable of reading adult books but obviously the topics are not suitable, especially as she's quite niave.

She's in yr 7.

Any suggestions

This is what Young Adult books are for. Have a look at the Carnegie shortlist. They’d all be suitable. ChickenHouse and Walker are both publishers who a very good list for this age group.

Maybe steer clear of some of the authors who reference sex, such as Sarah Maas or Sara Barnard, but to be honest, their publishers have vetted the references and deemed them acceptable for that age group

Ask her school librarian or the local authority children’s librarian (ask at yr local library)

I second the Robin Stevens books. Also try some of the older Helen Peters books (Secret Hen House Theatre, Farm beneath the Water), Gill Lewis, Eva Ibbotson, Frances Hardinge, Little Women series, the "My Story" books (semi-fictional historic stories), the older Jacqueline Wilson books (but check first as a couple of them may be too much for her), some of the Michael Morpurgo ones are more for older readers if she' s not read them already.

My DD is in year 8 and has reread Yankee Girl over and over again. I haven’t read it but it was on an 11 plus reading list, so it is probably worth a look!

What about Rosemary Sutcliffe?

Ta da! www.thebookseller.com/news/walker-books-leads-years-carnegie-and-kate-greenaway-longlists-1192493

(Lots of the posters here have got suggestions from their own childhoods, which is lovely, but in my experience some of them haven’t dated well and there are so many fabulous new books out there. Noughts and Crosses is on tv soon....)

For those saying "look at Young Adult books", be careful - many of those are not in my view suitable for naive, sensitive 12 year olds (and some not suitable for any 12 year olds). DD was ready for the dystopian fiction type ones but DS wasn't. Neither were comfortable with anything that had more than a chaste kiss in it yet many YA books go much further.

She's the perfect age for ;;www.<a class="break-all" href="https://amazon.co.uk/Charlotte-Sometimes-Vintage-Childrens-Classics/dp/009958252X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=charlotte%20sometimes&qid=1582490799&sr=8-1&tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-childrens-books-3831037-Suitable-books-for-quite-an-innocent-12yo-girl-whose-a-very-good-reader" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">amazon.co.uk/Charlotte-Sometimes-Vintage-Childrens-Classics/dp/009958252X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=charlotte+sometimes&qid=1582490799&sr=8-1 Charlotte Sometimes]] - a book I read as a child and is one of those stories that just stayed with me to the extent that I bought myself a copy a few years ago. It's a haunting, lovely book.

Sorry - Charlotte Sometimes

These may be a little hard to find, probably have to be secondhand via AbeBooks or similar;

Fifteen by Beverley Cleary (set in a IS high school on the 1950s, very innocent, lived this as a pre-teen)

Hanging Out With CiCi by Francine Pascal (time travelling teen who meets her Mum as a teenager and gets to know her in a whole different light)

Oh yes, DS likes the QI books too.

Neither were comfortable with anything that had more than a chaste kiss in it yet many YA books go much further.

Yes this is my main worry. She took a book back to the school library because she deemed it "inappropriate". When I questioned what could be inappropriate in a school library book she said it mentioned sex a lot. I read the bits she was talking about and it was all very innocent but it still made her feel uncomfortable.

I may have sheltered her too much maybe

YY to life of Pi

I can't remember when I first started reading Austen, either - she might still be a bit young. I think the most accessible of her books for a young reader is probably Northanger Abbey.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

I loved Fifteen, @ChequerBoard!

My 11 year old loves 1920s boarding school books like Angela Brazil and L M Alcott books (Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Jack and Jill, An Old Fashioned Girl, plus the 4 in the Little Women series).

More recent books - Murder Most Unladylike, Sally Nichols books, Eva Ibbotson eg Journey to the River Sea, Star is Kazan.

Skellig - David Almond
A wrinkle in time
Divergent series
Dark is rising series - Susan Cooper
Warjak paw
Warrior cats series

In that case I take back my Sarah Waters suggestion but I expect she'll get through this phase pretty quickly op

Alanna by Tamara Pierce

School librarian is a good suggestion. DD sees her school librarian every lunchtime and swaps her books over. She provides lists of things not available at school and we go to the library. Some of the Carnegie books she read last year were brill, some a little much for some 12yos I suspect so check the content first.

Yes, Carnegie Short List books can be wonderful (eg The House With Chicken Legs, just one lovely read from last year) but many are definitely YA and unsuitable for younger teens.

the Cadfael mysteries

sex happens, in various places to different degrees of respectability, but it's all very carefully told. I think the closest we get to explicit is when someone - ah - discovers that the visiting novice is not actually a man...

It's a long time since I read His Dark Materials, but I suspect that the bit where Lyra and Will get all Dusty might be deemed inappropriate by the 12yo in question

It's not inappropriate at all. They just kiss.

Echo pp it's time for the classics! Me and dd both loved swallows and Amazon's series too. There are so many to choose from. She may even be ready for Austen.

the Cadfael mysteries

And in that vein, the Matthew Bartholemew series by Susanna Gregory, murder but very little gore and often funny.

Just remembered dd loved the redwall series of books... they are like a very epic and serious wind in the willows, Dd loved animals so they worked. There are loads of them!