books for year two boys - Marina? Roisin? Anyone?

[puddle]

You've both given me some great ideas in the past for books for ds and it's now coming up to Christmas and I would like put some more on his christmas list.

He's reading pretty well on his own now (currently tackling Harry Potter, reading alternate chapters with me) and I'd like to encourage that further, so some books he can read alone but also some more comlicated ones for me to read to him.

We've just had the Cressida Cowell ones and he loved those. Greek myths went down well too and the Narnia books.

Any ideas/ recommendations?

dont do the roman mystery ones

crapola

Book People/Redhouse has a box set of Just William at the moment, the original Richmal Crompton rather than the shortened ones for younger readers - but sometimes does the shorter ones too.

Enid Blyton's "The Mystery of ..." series, and the "The [insert thing eg "River"] of Adventure" series are good for year 2 independent readers.

The wildly prolific Alexander McCall-Smith does nice (quite short) detective-y books for this sort of age.

And, on the detective (but also nostalgia) track, there's always the Emil books.

If he likes nonfiction too, ds (now year 3 and a slightly keener on nonfiction than fiction) got deeply into the Murderous Maths/Horrible History/Geography/Science series last year.

We're all famous five-d aout here cod, after having a mad burst of enthusiasm for them. Even ds has observed 'they're all the same really aren't they?'

Bink had forgotten the EB adventure series - that might be one to try.

Thanks everyone - lots of great ideas.

Eric Linklater's The Pirates of the Deep Green Sea is a rather barking "nostalgia" read. Came across it while ordering a bink recommendation, Noel Langley's The Land of Green Ginger.
Bink, ds loved Emil and the Detectives

Oh and, although they are rather dated in certain respects, I think some boys on here might also like the Willard Price animal adventure books.

Just to bolster my own recommendation of the Horrible History (etc.) series, ds's reading about early civilisations seems to lodged: he had a nightmare last night where our flat caught fire & we all had to escape to the communal gardens, which we did, conveniently (& clearly rather thrilledly) taking shelter in "two ancient Celtic roundhouses".

dd (yr 2) is a big fan of the Horrible Histories (in fact, I noticed that they have a Xmas Annual out for stockings) although I find them a bit hard to digest, she seems to love the way the books are laid out.

marina, is My Family and Other Animals ok for this age group? I loved it as a child but thought I must have read it when I was a bit older.

There are a set of books starting with Dimanche Diller (by Henrietta Branford) - they are beautifully written, some quite difficult text - the main 'hero' is a girl though (so not sure if that would suit your boys!) but it follows her life story after her parents drown while sailing round some Greek Islands (leaving her a fortune) and a woman pretends to be her aunt to try and get her hands on it! They are exciting books and dd couldn't wait to read them to find out what happened.

Have resurrected this fabulous book thread to ask.....what age are the James Bond jnr books aimed at and has anyone tried them?

Hi puddle, there was a dicussion started by cod the other day on the merits of Alex Rider vs Young Bond.
The consensus was that Yr 2 is on the young side for either and that Alex Rider is actually better than Young Bond, which was depressing news for those of us who are grinding through Stormbreaker without having tried Young Bond yet.
Will find and link.
Varjak Paw has been a bigger hit with ds than Grk, interestingly.

Here

Oh - missed that Marina - thanks v much!

We are just about to try Grrrk.

Harry Potter abandoned at vol 3 as Ds scared of the dementors and the werewolves. I am quite pleased that a book has the power to engage him so much it actually gives him nightmares!

DS1 loved Varjak Paw and gulped it down ravenously.

Ursla Lequin has written fantasy books for children and my DP thinks they are fantastic. Some argue that a certain very very popular children's writer who has writen a series of fantasy books for kids is much inferior. here

DS1 (now 8 and in Y4) read the first two Alex Rider books last year and gave up half way through the third. I can't say I blame him. They're very ...... dry, and very 'men's action' type stuff. He hasn't wanted to try Young Bond yet.

DS has retured to the Cressida Cowell books and he and dd were pretending to be 'common or garden' dragons together this morning.

Ursula le Guin's Earthsea book are fantastic but I can't agree they would be suitable for a 6/7 year old. They are brilliant for early teens but the themes they deal with would be way over the head of a younger child.
I do think there is a temptation when you have a child who is a very able reader to give them books that they would probably enjoy much more when they are slightly older - this is something I have struggled with a lot myself, but when you have a six year old who can read and comprehend at the level of a 12-year-old it is hard to remember that they are not getting the same thing out of the book that an actual 12-year-old would.

DP read the Earthsea books to DS (7). i htink it was more cos he loved them. He even wanted to name our DD Urusla.

Message withdrawn

We have this issue too Rosa. Ds is a nosy confident reader in a house full of age-inappropriate literature (from Dilbert cartoon albums to Saul Bellow, to John Updike to Eric Schlosser, we've confiscated them all). We feel very cheered when he revisits some of his younger books because we can relax for a bit. He came home with a book, for children, by that SAS meathead Chris Ryan, from the book sale at school this week

I loved Ursula K LeGuin, must dig those out.
Ds currently seems to prefer bombs to cloaks though

My DD2 who is also year 2 is loving Famous Five at the moment. Marginal improvement on the secret seven I think - the girls get a little more share of the action.

Drosophila I too love the Earthsea books but I wouldn't have gone that far. Still it could have been worse - he would presumably have named a son Ged!

Joan Aiken- Black Hearts In Battersea- brilliant
Michelle Paver- Wolf Brother series
Penelope Lively-The Ghost of Thomas Kempe
Susan Cooper- The Dark is Rising
Arthur Ransome- Old Peter's Russian Tales

Louis Sachar? Jan Mark? Pete Johnson? Kevin Crossley-Holland?

Bellow and Updike! - blimey Marina how old is your DS? I think too, it is not just a matter of what is age-inappropriate, as those examples clearly are, but also, of what we push on children too early, and maybe put them off, when they might enjoy them more if they discovered them for themselves at a slightly later date. The threads on here are often full of these well-meaning recommendations which I feel are actually counter-productive as you end up with a child who has 'read' say Michelle Paver, Susan Cooper, Richmal Crompton or Ursula Le Guin (to give some of the examples from this thread) at six, but hasn't remotely entered into the kind of emotional engagement with them that they would be capable of at ten or twelve.

Agree Rosa. I think my DS would be capable of reading Susan Cooper etc now (Y2), but I really don't think he would understand them. Will be delighted when he is ready for them though. At the moment it is Horrible Histories mixed with Narnia, and Lemony Snickett is waiting to be read, along with Adolphus Tips, and a large box of tissues!

I absolutely agree with you Rosa. I don't want to spoil reading for my ds by psuhing him to tackle things before he is reading.

I was in two minds about Harry Potter to be honest - he was desperate to read them but as far as I can see think the later books, not the first one, have got such a lot going on in them, yes he can follow the story but there's more to a book than who did what and when with whom. So I was glad when he decided he wanted to stop reading them.

I think Just William appealed more to to my jaded parental palate (certainly I loved reading them after endless famous 5)than ds's (although he does like the cd).

I think it's a difficult balance - I still read to ds and we tend to tackle slightly older and more interesting books together - but that sometimes means the books he reads on his own seem very dull.