Exciting Reads for a 7 year old. Please can you give me some recommendations?

[TeddyBear7]

Hi there. My daughter loves reading authors like Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton. She has read all the Mallory Towers books and just finished the Famous Five adventures - she said the latter were good but she predicted all the endings - does anyone have any recommendations for something suitable that might keep her guessing? She's just finished Heidi which she loved. Would the Secret 7 be more challenging\interesting than Famous 5 ? I would put her on Harry Potter but she can get scared easily. She's 7 and good at reading but on the other hand is quite immature. Many thanks.

David Walliams? While funny they also deal with sensitive topics though.

How is she with more older style text? Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables or Sara the little Princess may be something but they can be hard to read.

Easier ones are
Animal Ark series
Books from Stacey Gregg - horse related
Cornelia Funke - vastly underappreciated in this country but really good.

The Secret Seven are a step back from the Famous Five. They are less complicated in language and plot.

How about Swallows and Amazons?

My DD is 7 too and she likes Roald Dahl. She's also recently read the Secret Garden which she liked but I had to read the start (parents dying of Cholera) to her until they got to Mistlethwaite.

Go for the St Clare's books, if she liked Malory Towers.

Sophie and the Shadow Woods series.

Humphrey the Ha,star series by Betty Birney.

At that age my dc had read (at least one of them had read anyway):
Little House Stories
Swallows and Amazons series
Harry Potter (the dc who didn't scare easily had anyway)
Early Chalet School
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
Roman Mysteries
Various girly classics like Little Princess/Katie Did etc
Noel Streatfield (Ballet Shoes etc)
Williard Price
Cue For Treason
Bannermere Series
Some Violet Needham
Tintin
Lone Pine Series (ds' favourite)

Sophie and the Shadow Woods
Ottoline
Pippi Longstocking

Agree with St Clare's if she likes Malory Towers. My DDs loved them. Beverly Cleary's Ramona series is another less well known option. Other books my DDs enjoyed around that age:

• how to train your dragon series
• Mr Gum books (very much 7 year old humour!)
• possibly Pseudonomys Bosch's Secret series (though may be best for slightly older kids)
• Emily Windsnap series by Liz Kessler
• the Princess Poppy full chapter books

I second the Roman Mysteries suggestion; also there's a series called Shadow of the Dragon by Kate O'Hearn (I think) which is fantasy with female protagonists. I have just given my 7yo DS Astrid Lindgren's 'Ronia the Robber's Daughter' and he absolutely loved it (as did I when I was a child!); IMO way more interesting than Pippi Longstocking (though those are good as well). A show about 'The Neverending Story' - another of my books that I've just shared with DS!

*and how, not A show

dyac

If you want exciting reads, my DS (6) loves the Astrosaurs, and the Cows in Action books. They're slightly different to Mallory Towers though!

I was devouring Agatha Christie murder mystery novels at about that age, I loved that I couldn't work out the endings.

I think quite a lot of the suggestions above are quite scary for a sensitive 7 year old.

There is a long series called Adventure Island by Helen Moss which is similar in style to Famous 5, but written recently and not so predictable.

Marcus Sedgwick has written a great fantasy series for younger readers - Elf Girl and Raven boy - if you want to try her with some fantasy.

My 7 year old adores the "daisy and the trouble with....." series.

I'd say Roman Mysteries might well be too scary.

How about The Worst Witch?

Thank you so much everyone - some great suggestions across a broad range of interests - really excited to follow up on them! I may even read some of the ones I never read as a child myself!

Any opinions on Michael Morpurgo or Nina Bawden?

Mr Gum - brilliant writing and very funny and quirky.
Big Nate books - wonderful pictures and funny.
My son read all the Roman Mysteries at that age, but they are pretty scary. I read a bit to him once and it was about a woman dying in childbirth.

The Daisy books by Kes Gray are funny.
My daughter liked the Alice-Miranda books at that age. They're about an impossibly rich, but really nice, girl at a boarding school.

My 7 yr old loved The Worst Witch, we're now in the middle of the How to Train your Dragon books, which are exciting, but less scary than Harry Potter

I'm pleased to see "Swallows and Amazons" mentioned a few times, and ALL the Arthur Ransome books are well worth reading.

In particular, "Coot Club", set on the Norfolk Broads around 1930, can be read in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey 2-1/2" map of the Broads. All the places mentioned are REAL places - the rivers, broads, roads, railways, villages, pubs, bridges, windmill pumping stations - can be seen on the map. Some railways may be closed now, and roads may be wider than in the '30s, but mostly it can all be traced still. This gives extra interest to the story, and helps develop map-reading skills.