10 Great Grownup Books for Kids
As school comes to a close, my child’s teacher has assigned her 3rd graders some required reading. The students must choose a book from a list and write a report on it over the summer. An avid reader, my kid was totally psyched about this until we had a look at the list of books from which she must choose: Four Flat Stanley books and a couple of Beverly Cleary’s Henry stories.
Some kids might seriously enjoy reading those books but my kid’s literary tastes are a little more mature. She will read and write a report on one of those books, but she won’t enjoy it one bit.
In the meantime, I have been casting around for books that, while appropriate for her maturity level, might also challenge her and expose her to new ideas. You know, grown up books that aren’t too grown up.
Today, I found what I’ve been looking for! Felisa Rogers has put together a list of 10 Great Grownup Books for Kids. These books were written for adults but can be enjoyed by children who are ready for something a little heavier.
Rogers, a writing teacher, has pre-read these books to ensure they have a “kid-friendly style and content.” That means your kid can expand her horizons without being shocked by a steamy romantic encounter halfway through an otherwise great book.
Here are Felisa Rogers’ picks for great grownup books for kids. Check out her blog for full descriptions of each.
- “Animal Farm” by George Orwell (middle grades to young adult)
- “Lost Horizon” by James Hilton (advanced middle grades to young adult)
- “The Red Pony” by John Steinbeck (middle grades to young adult)
- “The Flame Trees of Thika” by Elspeth Huxley (middle grades to young adult)
- “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee (advanced middle grades to young adult)
- “Gentlemen of the Road” by Michael Chabon (young adult)
- “Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold” by C.S. Lewis (advanced middle grades to young adult)
- “The Mysterious Stranger” by Mark Twain (advanced middle grades to young adult)
- “Talking to Strange Men” by Ruth Rendell (young adult)
- “Bless Me, Ultima” by Rudolfo Anaya (advanced middle grades to young adult)
What are your kids reading this summer?
Image: Amazon.com
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What a great list! However, if your kid is really an avid and advanced reader, she can probably handle some more adult themes just fine. My parents had a no-censorship policy on books. I couldn’t watch an R rated movie till high school, but I was reading “Lord of the Flies” and similar books by age 10. Yeah, the content was disturbing, but it was never more than I could handle, and when things like sex came up on the playground, I knew how to tell the crap from the truth.
Comments
Luckily my daughter got the Black Stallion this year. Last year it was one of the Beverly Cleary books and getting her to read it was like pulling teeth. She’s never liked stories about “regular people”. She’s always prefered history, mysteries, or fantasy. She’s a good reader, and I usually pre-read books at a higher reading level that I’m not sure about the content. I know there are things that will freak her out, and there’s things I don’t want my 9 yr old to know about yet. One thing my kids have enjoyed that we started recently is I’ve been reading classic stories to them. I never read a lot of them growing up, but they are great, well written, smart stories. We read the Christmas Carol at the holidays and just started the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and are loving it.
[...] Ten Great Grownup Books for Kids [...]
“Gentlemen of the Road”??? The vocabulary in that book is so dense and gratuitously advanced that even *I* had trouble getting through it.
Great list, but I had never thought of To Kill a Mockingbird as a grown up book, more of YA.