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Secondary education

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Any English teachers got book lists for kids to read at home that will help to improve writing?

4 replies

Toomanytealights · 08/03/2018 18:46

Really need to broaden dd's reading material but could do with some recommendations.

Tia

OP posts:
user1496584851 · 08/03/2018 18:48

How old, and what does she like already?

Toomanytealights · 08/03/2018 19:08

13

OP posts:
user1496584851 · 08/03/2018 20:08

Patrick Ness is great - really different and unusual. The Knife of Never Letting Go, A Monster Calls, More Than This. All good and all different.

The Girl of Ink and Stars and The Island at the End of Everything (both Kiran Millwood Hargrave) are beautifully written and poetic.

Moving towards adult books, Daphne du Maurier is great for younger teens, although the style can be a bit complex to mimic. Rebecca is the best one and Frenchman's Creek is the easiest.

Michelle Paver's Dark Matter is another lovely piece of writing and is a genuinely scary ghost story (the ghostly bit doesn't kick in until quite late in the book and is quite gruesome when it does come). Her books for younger readers eg Wolf Brother has me gripped at 41 so not to be sniffed at if not yet read.

The main thing is to tap into interests, even if these are spin-offs from quite ordinary things, eg if she is into the musical Hamilton there are quite a few YA romances out at the moment about Alexander and Eliza Hamilton, etc.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is interesting, the sequels a bit less so.

Flight of a Starling by Lisa Heathfield is a little gem but very sad with a suicide theme.

JoJoSM2 · 08/03/2018 20:32

What's wrong with her writing? Extensive reading can help indirectly but if she struggles to write well then she should be learning how to write better. Just like getting better at sport is achieved by training rather than watching.

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