Junie B Jones or Magic Treehouse?

We also thought of the Ramona Quimby books, but again, so very old!

I loved all these books at her age, along with Cleary's other books.

Old but good: All of a Kind Family. Mr. Popper's Penguins. The 21 Balloons. Pinky Pye.

New: Ivy + Bean. Mercy Watson. Kate Klise has a young chapter book series about circus I think. If your teacher doesn't mind less 'literary' stuff then Warriors, Goosebumps are very popular with 2nd and 3rd graders.

It's a tough age, when the basics are super boring but proper middle grade chapter books are a bit too much. The best books for this age IMO are old.

Jessica - Ivy & Bean, for certain - do you want me to ask HPF? we went through this exact same thing which is when the book blog was born... ( [link] - kind of out of service atm, devolved into emojis for a while too)

Magic Tree House, Stuart Little, Calpurnia Tate, Ramona/Cleary, Mrs. Pigglewiggle

Also maybe a little ahead but keep an eye on Tuesdays in the Castle, A Nest for Celeste, some of the American Girl Doll Books, Rick Riordian...

You guys are awesome!!

This teacher is fantastic, but she's been teaching kinder for over 20 years, so the literary-er, the better. (I mentioned that A loves reading Calvin & Hobbes, Nimona, Bone, and Amulet at home and she kind of made an "oh...comics..." face, like she knew intellectually that comics are supposed to be considered Real Books now, but couldn't quite make herself really believe it deep down.)

I remember the comic book argument when I was in library science school 30 years ago. The teachers grudgingly admitted that anything that got kids reading was good but one should get them on proper books as soon as possible. I did a paper on how comics were being treated in current professional literature that irked a few professors. But they actually begged me not to change majors to communications, because I was the most interesting student they'd had in ages. Which is why I changed majors, because all the other students were boring and I didn't want to end up like them.

Speaking of children and books, did I post that my Mom picked up The Gashlycrumb Tinies from ltc's bookshelf the other day without knowing what it was and started reading it to her? I heard her from the other room say, "I don't know what this horrible book is but we're going to pick another one!"

I think at that age I was reading The Bobbsey Twins but those were old then.

Half Magic by Edward Eager is such a fun book. I read it about that age.

I read all of the Oz books starting about 2nd grade. They vary in quality but The Wizard of Oz and Marvelous Land of Oz and The Patchwork Girl were all pretty great. I also really liked Baum's The Sea Fairies and Sky Island books. They are some of his best written but also have some scary scenes.

Gone Away Lake.

Oh, Eva Ibbotson's magic stories are cool: [link]

Other fun Cleary books like Runaway Ralph are good.

Maybe the Pippi Longstocking stories?

I was going to say (as usual) the All of a Kind Family books, but flea beat me to it.

Some Judy Blume would also be perfect for her -- the Pain & the Great One series, and the Fudge series.

Oh, and the Penderwick books!

Sorry, I keep adding -- what about Sam the Bat? [link]

Gone Away Lake.

Elizabeth Enright rocks hard.