Homeschool World Forum

Some of my personal favorites...

For lower elementary:
Crysanthemum (**great for grades 1-2!)
A Year Down Yonder
A Long Way From Chicago
Courage of Sarah Noble
Cam Jansen series
Daisy-head Mayzie
Magic Tree House series

For upper elementary:
BFG (** great for grades 3-5!)
Birchbark House
Black Beauty
Brian's Winter (** great for grades 3-6!)
Sideways Stories from Wayside School
Breadwinner
Hatchet (** prequel to 'Brian's Winter')
Bridge to Terabithia (** this is a movie, too)
Bunnicula
Castle in the Attic
Children of the Wild West
Children of the Longhouse
Classroom at the End of the Hall
Bud, Not Buddy
Because of Winn Dixie (** great for grades 3-5!) (** AWARD-WINNING)
In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson
House of Dies Drear
Number the Stars (** great for grades 3-6!)
Rascal
Sacajawea
Shiloh
Trumpet of the Swan
Chronicles of Narnia (**great for grades 5-6!) (** this is a movie, too!)

Teens:
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Eragon (** great for young teens!)
Eldest (** sequel to 'Eragon')
Lord of the Rings (** this is a movie, too!)
Lord of the Flies (** great for teens!)
A Wrinkle in Time
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Call of the Wild
White Fang
My Brother Sam is Dead
Outsiders
Little Women (** great for grades 8-11!) (** CLASSIC)
Pearl
Of Mice and Men
Scarlet Letter
Romeo and Juliet (** great for older teens!)
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Wuthering Heights

If we're getting into the subject of books for older children, there are simply too many to list Heinlein, for instance, wrote all sorts of great books. One of my all-time favorites is Tunnel in the Sky. Beware of stobor!

That's a great list Morgan!

Heinlein was fab for me as a teen and as an adult!

Some modern books that would be good for your children's age range are Eragon and I Am David. In my opinion, I Am David, is quickly becoming a literary classic. Anne Holm does an excellent job of depicting the struggles of those who emerge from concentration camps. You can also find websites that feature teacher question prompts for the book.

I agree that the Lord of the Rings would be on top of my list. I know someone who wrote a whole curriculum on that book. I have never used it but looked at it and it was interesting. I also have in my older child's reading list this year: The Scarlet Letter, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, some Mark Twain, along with some others but I am still picking those out.

I recommend the book My Side of the Mountain if you haven't already read it.

I just finished reading aloud to my children (2nd, 3rd and 5th grader) The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi. THEY LOVED IT. Once we were about 5 chapters into the book, they were so into it they would BEG me to read more each time. IN the final chapters it was so exciting that we sometimes read for 40 minutes at a time. This morning I read for one hour in order to finish the book. I had to hide the book last night when my husband and I left them with a sitter, I was afraid they'd read the end without me!

I'd say it's a upper level 6th grade reader for independent reading, maybe even 7th grade. THe vocabulary is very challenging. I often substituted easier words for some I'd come across while reading, just to be sure my 2nd grader was able to follow.

We've been studying Explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries, so this book about a girl on a ship traveling across the Atlantic really helped our studies come to life. THere's a diagram of the ship in the back of the book so the kids learned many parts of a boat in order to follow the story. The kids made lots of connections with the events of this story, with some events we read about in the explorers lives (mutiny, harsh captains, horrible food and water, etc.)

One site I like to use is www.bookangles.com. It's a free service by a homeschooling family. They have some lists of favorite books by age category and they also have detailed reviews of many books so you can quickly see for yourself if a book fits your family's values and seems right for your child. That saves a lot of time-- I can't read everything before my children do-- they are avid readers! It's all written from a Christian worldview, which, imo, makes it a lot more useful to me than a general book review site. ( Note: You really have to register to get the most useful info but they don't do anything with the info you provide (just name and e-mail)-- they just want to protect children from seeing some of the commentary which might include bad language, immoral content and the like so they have parents register and use a password.)

I've combined the various book lists we've accumulated over 10 years of homeschooling, and put them in searchable/sortable lists on this website:
http://www.everygoodbook.com

My kids love Horatio Alger books! I received the book Ragged -CENSORED- as a gift from my cousin.
I think the book is special edited, as it has "teacher's guide" at the end. My kids like it so much that I bought the other two in the series: Fame and Fortune and Mark the Match Boy. It's called Stories of Success.