Reading recommendations for DD(12)

[TabbyTigger]

A very keen reader but she keeps going back to her old favourites (Gone With the Wind/Little Women/ The Penderwicks/Harry Potter/Tuck Everlasting/His Dark Materials/Great Expectations, if that helps with suggestions!) so I want to find new texts to challenge her. Her most recent favourites are Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Red Sky in the Morning (Elizabeth Laird), The Help, Swing Time (Zadie Smith), How to be Both and Public Library (Ali Smith), and The Waves (Virginia Woolf). Any suggestions based off these various favourites would be much appreciated, or just what your 12/13yos are reading!

Dd is 11

She has enjoyed

All fall down
Close your pretty eyes
Wonder (might be a bit young)
She's currently on hunger games

Ah we all loved Wonder and The Hunger Games in our house! I’ll definitely check out your other suggestions, not heard of them.

Ah I love, Gone with the wind! My all time favourite book, although I read it when I was older than your daughter, probably about 14 or 15 the the first time.

Has she read the 'Gone' series by Michael Grant?My 11 year old is devouring them. My just turned 14 year old read the 'Dark Eden' trilogy by Chris Beckett last year and loved them. I'll have a dig around our bookshelves and kindles and come back later if I can think of anything.

Scarlett she has the most battered and worn down copy of Gone with the Wind (it was mine first) and insists on taking it to read on holiday every year!

She has read Gone and enjoyed them but I haven’t heard of the ‘Dark Eden’ Trilogy - I’ll check it out!

The Hunger games and on to more adult books she adored me before you and after you. I have to say at 12/13 I was reading Jilly Cooper so as long as she reads I am happy I no longer police what she reads.

The forest of hands and teeth series
Patrick Ness' Chaos Walking trilogy

Re-reading old favourites over and over can actually be a plus, IMO. I think children are much more likely to permanently absorb vocabulary from context if they re-read the same texts several times. Little Women is fantastic for its sophisticated vocabulary - I learned enormous amounts of vocabulary from my unflagging devotion to that book!

Philip Pullman has written some YA Victorian setting thrillers that are quite sophisticated - she might like those, if she likes his writing.

Noughts and Crosses series by Malorie Blackman?

My dd enjoyed 'they both die in the end' and 'more happy than not' both by Adam Silvera. She also liked 'one of us is lying'- I think it's like a dark Breakfast Club.

She also enjoyed 'salt to the sea' and 'between shades of gray' by ruta sepetys.

What about shadowing the Carneige short list until they announce the winner in June. Lots of schools and libraries run shadowing groups for discussion, or you could just look on the website and she could do it alone.

My DD is 12 and has been reading lots of Sarah Crossan - she won the Carnegie in 2016 with 'One' about conjoined twins - it's written in a verse style - might sound awful, but isn't at all. Has also enjoyed 'the nowhere emporium' which won one of the other children's book prizes a year or two ago. Also enjoying all of the Swallows and Amazons series. Mostly reading stuff in the Young Adult section of library, but not so much about romance as not terribly interested in that just yet. Has enjoyed 'the curious incident of the dog in the night time' and 'Lord of the Flies'

Her school book group read 'the tulip touch' and Ray Bradburys 'Fahrenheight 151' (think I've got the number wrong!) as well as all of the Noughts and Crosses stuff.

That said, she also returns to old favourites a lot - some Jacqueline Wilson, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Ruby Redfort and even Enid Blyton.

For lighter stuff ... The Name Of This Book Is Secret is the first of a totally bonkers set of 5 fantasy-set-in-this-world books.

Anything by Terry Pratchett! Good Omens should be compulsory. The Discworld books

No Jane Austen on the list... not read or not enjoyed?

I started enjoying Thomas Hardy at that age - found Tess and Jude the best ones to start with.

Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart books are fun for lighter reading.

I loved Sherlock Holmes stories at that age too.

I also read some Victor Hugo (Les Mis) and Tolstoy (Anna Karenina and War and Peace) during the summers I turned 12 and 13.

Goodnight Mr Tom and A Little Lovesong by Michelle Magorian are my faves from my childhood.

Lonecat cringe at Jilly Cooper she’s read Me Before You but said she found it too sappy. Don’t think she’s massively into a lot of romantic teen fiction which is interesting. Seems to either like romantic classics or sci-fi YA stuff.

She’s loved all the books by Patrick Ness (especially when she was younger), Malorie Blackman, and Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials and the spin offs are just her all time favourites - she has so many favourites I only listed her number 1s).

Not heard of any of your suggestions LostArt so will definitely be having a look!

Carnegie Shotlist is a good idea. She’s read most of your suggestions but not “The Nowhere Emporium” so thank you! Also not heard of Ruby Redfort. I have a 5yo DD who is already an avid reader so might save that for her.

Bringonthescience ooh she loved “The Name of This Book is Secret” and co, and has read the Discworld books (I’m sure you now see why I feel like I’m running out - she read 11 books in the 9 days of February half term!!) she adored “Nation” by him too. I’ll see if there’s any more of his.

And lastly LorelaiVictoriaGilmore she read all the Austen I had a few years ago so I didn’t class them as recent favourites and the only ones she still re reads are Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion. Hardy also has been exhausted. She was actually re-reading Far From the Madding Crowd earlier! But again I just didn’t class them in her absolutely favourites. She wasn’t a Sherlock Holmes fan - I think only read two of them. Maybe she’ll try again now! And she read Les Miserables but wasn’t in love with it (I think the lengthy historical passages and unlikeable characters got the better of her). She’s currently half way through Anna Karenina as it’s my all time favourite book! (I prefer it in Russian though) she’s enjoying so far so War and Peace could be next.

Any more suggestions are welcomed - this has been so useful!

What about Nancy Mitford? I read The Pursuit of Love at about that age and then devoured everything else I could lay my hands on.

Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers series is great, as are his Dirk Gently books.

Susan Cooper's The Dark is rising sequence is really good (though she might well have already read that).

Wilkie Collins
Steinbeck
Daphne Du Maurier

Dodie Smith - I capture the Castle, or Cold Comfort fun? Both different but gentle coming of age books which she might enjoy?

Ooh I loved Douglas Adams/Dodie Smith when I was younger. Will definitely get her those.

She’s done some Steinbeck (just the obvious - Of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath!) which was probably enough for her, but did LOVE Rebecca and Jamaica Inn so more Du Maurier might be a good idea! She’s read some Wilkie Collins short stories but nothing else so that’s another good suggestion.

Not heard of Susan Cooper or Nancy Mitford but I’ll have a look!

Thank you!

if she likes GWTW, I recommend Alexandra Ripley's 'Charleston', 'On Leaving Charleston' and 'New Orleans Legacy'. Ripley has written some others too.

if she read 'The Help' she should read 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.

she might also like Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series.

she might like books by Lois Duncan (author of I Know What You Did Last Summer).

around that age, I also enjoyed Less than Zero (Bret Easton Ellis).

Wow, she's read a lot. Perhaps she's a bit young for some of them which is why she keeps on going back to them. Perhaps let her do that for a while, otherwise the content will become unsuitable! That's what I had to do with my DD.

Seed by Lisa Heathfield
The Smell of Other People’s Houses by Bonnie Sue Hitchcock
Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon
Apache by Tanya Landman
Lies we Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley
One by Sarah Crossan
The Weight of Water by Sara Crossan
Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth

These are all books my recently turned 13 daughter has read in the last year. Also I believe The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas has been winning awards for YA fiction recently, so worth a go.