I just bought my 8 year old daughter 50 books for the summer holidays

[mamalife1990]

As its the summer holidays I decided that I would let my 8 year buy some books for over the summer. She absolutely loves to read and I realised that it might be nice for her to have some new books to read over the next 6 weeks.

So I ordered her some books. However most of the books I ordered were series. I got a few individual books. But most of the books were series. Meaning I didn't really calculate how many books I was actually buying. My plan was, wait until all the books arrive, put them all in one big box and give the box to my daughter.

The last box arrived today so I went into my room and got every book and series out of their boxes....and I realised...that's a lot of books. So I decided to count and there is 50 books. 50! When you're buying book series, it's easy to forget how many books you are actually buying.

I gave my daughter the box and she is extremely happy. So seeing her smile was worth the financial cost of all these books.

Let's just hope my husband doesn't want a divorce after seeing so many books. Was this financially responsible? Nope. Do I regret anything? Nope.

Now my 4 year old wants some new books too 😭 Thankfully the books he would read are a lot cheaper lol

That’s a brilliant thing to do for your daughter!
My parents bought us as many books as we wanted- they had a lot of children so that amounted to an awful lot of books.

I'm glad she has books to read over the summer. But I never intended to buy 50 books 😭

How much did that all cost?!

Mine will probably read nearly that many books over the summer but we'll get them out the library 😂

If you have charity shops near you, you should check them out. I've managed to get so many series of books for pennies. My ds has just gotten into Roald Dahl, got 4 books for £1. We have a whole shelf of Horrid Henry for my youngest that only cost about £10. Time Hunters, we tried one then I got the complete series of vinted. Same with a football series and horrid histories.

Well done.

I bought my 13 yo 15 books. She chose 12 herself. She has other books too for summer from her birthday. And we have larges bookselves and a library if more are needed.

Charity shops often have books too even they are expensive here.

I have a 7 year-old and would be interested to know what books your daughter got excited about? Mine speaks English as a second language and I try to read to her as much as possible. She really enjoyed Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but it's usually much more babyish stuff like the Mr Men series, Beatrix Potter and The Gruffalo.

Ah, this is so lovely - your lucky daughter 😍😍

I tend to buy books off Vinted these days - much cheaper, especially if you get them as bundles. But your daughter is very lucky to have such a generous mum!

About £150

Which to be fair...for 50 books I'm fairly happy with that price 🤣

Me and my husband kind of have an unspoken rule...we won't really say no to our kids buying a book unless it is not age appropriate or they are getting that book for christmas or their birthday.

DD had so so many books at that age but 99% of them she choose at the car boot sale for pennies.

My daughter is considered an "advanced" reader. So some of the books are for kids a few years older than her.

A series of unfortunate events, Bridge to terabithia, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The hobbit. Those are a few examples of some of the books I bought for her!

Then again, these are just books my daughter will like. Obviously your daughter might not like these books. But honestly I just spent a few hours online looking at books, checking their themes and making aure they were age appropriate

If she enjoys not too complicated stuff maybe Enid Blyton?

I think this is a lovely thing to do and i would have been in heaven at 8 years old if this were me.
Books have always been my passion and i was always kept supplied as a child and i have never begrudged buying my children books.
I hope your child has a wonderful summer with her books , i'm sure she'll always remember this.

Took me back to my childhood when I devoured books,used to love those trips to whsmiths with my Christmas and birthday money.
I'm a mum to boys that although we read to them lots and would have willingly bought all the books they wanted they did lose interest in reading for pleasure aged 9 or 10 .

Wow wish someone had done that for me when I was young, mind that would be a great gift now. Have a great summer

Ah, I really hope my kids continue to love reading 😭

You can never have too many books in my opinion!

A suggestion - collect up the books she has read but doesn’t want to keep. Wrap them up so no one knows what they are. Next time she has a birthday party or even just a few friends over she can give them out as surprise new reads.

If someone had done this for me aged 8 I would have had the most blissfully happy summer holiday ever!

To be fair, we did have an awful lot of books (both parents were English teachers) and they were frequently happy to buy us more. We were also avid users of the local library.

But the idea of 50 new ones all at once is just so joyous! (I probably have at least that in my 'to be read' pile at the moment, to be hones)

I'm all for a childhood filled with books.

Thank you! She is so excited. She hasn't stopped reading all afternoon 🤣.

Great - but if you haven’t already done so, get her a library card too. Being able to go into a library and pick out all sorts of books with no worries about cost and not feeling any pressure to enjoy everything she picks out can be really liberating for kids.

(Also, when something’s a series, my advice is buy the first one and wait for her to read that until you buy the rest - then if she doesn’t enjoy the first one you won’t have wasted your money!)

I would have bankrupted my parents at that age...

That's such a good idea!

I think the excitment of having her own summer book box made her happy. It was like Christmas morning when she opened the box lol

We have a library card! We go to the library a lot.

For the series I bought, she read the first book from each series first before I bought the whole series. She borrowed the books from the library.