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Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi Novels for 9-12 year olds


Gaston de Foix
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My niece is a precocious reader and has finished all the Harry Potter books (including the Cursed Child!).  Tried and didn't like Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.  Help me out with some recommendations? So far I have: 

1. The Last Unicorn (haven't read this, so feedback especially welcome)

2. The Graveyard Book

3.  His Dark Materials (complete set)

4. The Bromeliad

5. The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

6.  The Hobbit. 

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Seconding Diana Wynne Jones. Also thirding and fourthing her. (And once your niece has read a bit more fantasy/played D&D, get her The Tough Guide to Fantasyland and Dark Lord of Derkholm). 

Frances Hardinge is great, and is still writing future classics. The Lie Tree and Deeplight are the ones I know, but she's done more. 

I can see some kids really liking this one, and others not so much, but I remember being very struck by Why the Whales Came by Michael Morpurgo when I was your niece's age. It's set in the Isles of Scilly. 

Also worth trying her with Rosemary Sutcliff. e.g. The Eagle of the Ninth maybe as an audio book in case she finds the slightly older style difficult initially. And The Wizard of Earthsea by Le Guin. And Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain

I realise that I'm falling into a trap that writers/librarians/booksellers complain about, in that I'm recommending (Hardinge excepted) the authors I loved when I was young. Still love, to be honest. And those authors are often very interesting people (Wynne Jones's childhood was a mess; Sutcliff was the daughter of an officer in the navy, grew up in Malta, was affected by Still's disease and seems to have been made of pure awesome), but they're not very diverse in the modern sense. 

Hopefully some of the other posts here can remedy that; plus, there will be good blogs out there able to suggest children's books from a wider and more up-to-date range of writers.

Anecdotally: when I was still working as a librarian a few years ago, a member of staff took out all of Michelle Paver's Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series for her daughter, who was mad keen on them. Also, my boss at the time said her sons loved Derek Landy's Skulduggery Pleasant series.

Edited by dog-days
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9 hours ago, dog-days said:

I realise that I'm falling into a trap that writers/librarians/booksellers complain about, in that I'm recommending (Hardinge excepted) the authors I loved when I was young. Still love, to be honest.

I'm about to do the same thing.  But these are the books I know and love and still enjoy.  And they are also books I've given to 9-12 year olds in recent years and they all enjoyed them so I think they hold up.

The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper starting with Under Sea, Over Stone

The Silver Crown by Robert C. O'Brien

The time quintet by Madeleine L'Engle starting with A Wrinkle in Time

Tom's Midnight Garden by Phillipa Pearce

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin (a more recent one, so read this as an adult)

Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

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4 hours ago, NewsToTom said:

My niece at that age bounced off the first one a couple years ago but I still recommend Megan Whalen Turner's Attolia series, starting with The Thief.

The first one in the series for certain but the second one is a little too grim and distressing for a pre-teen. The rest of the series is less grim and very entertaining but still likely best for a slightly older audience. YMMV but I wouldn't have recommended them to my nieces before ages 14/15.

Edited by kairparavel
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Many of the books mentioned in this thread are ones I enjoyed at that age. However, I have had very limited success getting my kids into this books I loved. Instead, below are some series that my kids (who are now 11 and 13) have read and liked:

1) Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger

2) Cherub by Robert Muchamore

3) The Immortals by Tamora Pierce

4) Warriors by Erin Hunter

5) The Schoolmanse by Naomi Novak (nine year old probably too young)

 

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10 hours ago, unJon said:

Many of the books mentioned in this thread are ones I enjoyed at that age. However, I have had very limited success getting my kids into this books I loved. Instead, below are some series that my kids (who are now 11 and 13) have read and liked:

1) Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger

2) Cherub by Robert Muchamore

3) The Immortals by Tamora Pierce

4) Warriors by Erin Hunter

5) The Schoolmanse by Naomi Novak (nine year old probably too young)

 

The Schoolmanse I was thinking for early to mid-teens (sex scene in second book if I recall correctly).  But agree great choice.  Weird thing about HP is that you start out with 7-11 reading with PS and end up with torture and death by Book 4-5.  By the time you are at book 7, death is on every second page.  

But now my niece has read all that (at age 7!), do I just reset to age-appropriate stuff? It's a dilemma. 

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2 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

The Schoolmanse I was thinking for early to mid-teens (sex scene in second book if I recall correctly).  But agree great choice.  Weird thing about HP is that you start out with 7-11 reading with PS and end up with torture and death by Book 4-5.  By the time you are at book 7, death is on every second page.  

But now my niece has read all that (at age 7!), do I just reset to age-appropriate stuff? It's a dilemma. 

Agree. I let my 11 year old read Schoolmanse. YMMV

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Both my kids love anything by Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Olympians etc.) and were probably 9 or 10 when they started reading them. There are also a bunch of similar "Rick Riordan presents" books that are similar to his books but draw on different mythologies.

My daughter (just turned 12) says Shannon Messenger is her favourite author.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Does anybody know which, if any, of these books have a decent German translation? Because I have a soon to be 12-year old niece who is not an avid reader (sigh), but does read age-appropriate stuff, with some encouragement. And German translations of many  SF/fantasy books tend to be pretty terrible, in my experience.  She has read HP, Cornelia Funke, the Hobbit and they are currently reading the first Percy Jackson in school. We tried "A Wrinkle in Time" a couple of years ago, but it didn't land. She is a bit tired of male main protagonists  and strongly dislikes romance. TIA.

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1 hour ago, Maia said:

Does anybody know which, if any, of these books have a decent German translation? Because I have a soon to be 12-year old niece who is not an avid reader (sigh), but does read age-appropriate stuff, with some encouragement. And German translations of many  SF/fantasy books tend to be pretty terrible, in my experience.  She has read HP, Cornelia Funke, the Hobbit and they are currently reading the first Percy Jackson in school. We tried "A Wrinkle in Time" a couple of years ago, but it didn't land. She is a bit tired of male main protagonists  and strongly dislikes romance. TIA.

 

She could give Pratchett a try. 

I recently got rid of most of my physical books and the gifted my old German translations of Pratchett to a friend with kids. His youngest really enjoys them afaik and I think the translations are really good. They sometimes fail on the literal side of things because some jokes just don't work in German but the translator finds his own jokes that work well in those situations. Pratchett actually mentioned that he appreciates translators that can do that when I saw him on a panel about translations at a con ages ago. If she likes him there is a huge volume of work she can read. 

Apart from that I have not read German translations of English books in ages and books from other languages I read in German are usually not SF/F.

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2 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

 They sometimes fail on the literal side of things because some jokes just don't work in German but the translator finds his own jokes that work well in those situations. Pratchett actually mentioned that he appreciates translators that can do that when I saw him on a panel about translations at a con ages ago.

Oh, really? Thanks! I didn't consider him because I thought that he would be particularly difficult to translate well for this very reason - humor is hard. Though, I guess, his popularity may have earned him better effort.  Do all of his books have the same translator? I guess that  Tiffany Aiching arc and Maurice would be the logical places to begin - did you read them in German? If not, which of the books that you read in German would you recommend as a starting point?

 

2 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Apart from that I have not read German translations of English books in ages and books from other languages I read in German are usually not SF/F.

Ditto.

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