Top sellers at recent school book fairs suggest that adventure and series featuring young heroes make cut! These chapter books also feature some illustrations, problem solving and fun…
THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY by Trenton Lee Stewart
“Are you a gifted child looking for special opportunities?”
When this peculiar ad appears in the newspaper, dozens of children enroll to take a series of mysterious, mind-bending tests. (And you, dear reader, can test your wits right alongside them.) But in the end just four very special children will succeed. Their challenge: to go on a secret mission that only the most intelligent and resourceful children could complete. To accomplish it they will have to go undercover at the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, where the only rule is that there are no rules.
The adventures began in book one and now there are three titles to choose from! Fun as a read aloud also.
DIARY OF A WIMPY KID by Jeff Kinney
Greg Heffley is thrust into middle school, where undersized weaklings share the hallways with kids who are taller, meaner, and already shaving. The hazards of growing up are uniquely revealed through words and drawings as Greg records them in his diary. Greg’s adventures (or mis-adventures) continue in three more books—all in primary colors. The yellow book is the latest in the series!
THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY by Adam Rex
It all starts with a school essay.
When twelve-year-old Gratuity (“Tip”) Tucci is assigned to write five pages on “The True Meaning of Smekday” for the National Time Capsule contest, she’s not sure where to begin. When her mom started telling everyone about the messages aliens were sending through a mole on the back of her neck? Maybe on Christmas Eve, when huge, bizarre spaceships descended on the Earth and the aliens – called Boov – abducted her mother? Or when the Boov declared Earth a colony, renamed it “Smekland” (in honor of glorious Captain Smek), and forced all Americans to relocate to Florida via rocketpod?
So far this is a “stand alone” title, no sequel or planned series, but with “photos,” drawings, newspaper clippings, and comics sequences, this is a hilarious, perceptive, novel.
Some more of my favorites for this young audience include:
THE EVOLUTION OF CALPURNIA TATE
THE INVENTION OF HUGO SELZNICK
GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS (or any other book of lists!)
THE SECRET GARDEN
THE JUNGLE BOOK