I have two questions.The first has to do with children in the lower grades reading 8/9 grade level books. The young girl read the whole Cul-de-sac Kids books in two days. Her brother read the Prince Warroirs series in 3 weeks. So many of the teen books, even Christian writers, deal with topics not appropriate for 8/9 year olds.Any suggestions?Second question:Has anyone read the Bergdan Chronicles by Ginny Dye? Would they be appropriate for a church library?
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We are blessed to have had an operational church library for many years. So, I have many "classics" that I try to encourage this age/ reader to explore - Mandy, Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew & Hardy Boys (the originals), Elise Dinmore... I also have copies of the suggested summer reading lists of several private schools; our public schools don't seem to that any more. The lists are excellent resources for children and parents. I keep up with the Battle of the Books program (elementary and middle school). I don't have all the books, but an assortment of them that best fit our parameters.
There are two excellent "new" series called The Lily series (I forget the author), and another called "Diva Diaries". Diva Diaries is a Christian alternative to the very popular Dork Diaries by Russell. Author is Spady. Both series would be appropriate for a church library.
We do have Harry Potter, the RIck Riordan books and the Happily Ever After series. As I tell people - there is nothing in those that is "inappropriate" for children to read -they are works of fiction and should be viewed as such. The church library is not supporting witchcraft. If you don't want your child to read them, that is your decision as a parent. But others know that whatever their children are reading from our library, someone else has read and approved.
I do get requests from children that I do not purchase because they are not appropriate for our library and let the parents know why I think so.
It seems sad, but I don't think kids are reading like they used to. :(
The homeschooled ones are, but not what I have in the library for their age group. They are reading adult level.
The Sonrise Stable books would be a good fit for that age group - particularly appealing to girls. You can see info on my page here. I'm not meaning to spam the site. :)
I homeschooled my 3 daughters for 17 years. They were voracious readers and read at a very high level at an early age, so I had that same problem. I previewed everything before they read it. Much of the modern stuff did not meet my standards. I found that a lot of the classics were suitable. I remember them plowing through very fat Dickens novels that I didn't even care to read.
Also there's a company called Lamplighter that is reprinting very old books with strong Christian and moral messages. We enjoyed many of those together as well. Their website is lamplighter.net
We all ready have a lot of the books from the Lamplighter, most haven't been checked out for a couple of years. And the homeschooling families have read the ones I have.
I'll look at Sonrise and see what they have.
Thank you for the suggestions.
Wonderful suggestions! Thank you for the reminder of those books -- especially Lamplighter. I love what they publish.
As a parent and grandparent of kids whose reading level was/is way beyond their grade levels I let them chose what they want things that 'go over their heads' are sometimes questioned but generally ignored.
I also know this on a personal level because by the 4th grade I had read everything in the children's section of the public Tampa library and started on the adult books and what I didn't understand was filed somewhere in the back of my brain where years later I remembered it and thought oh that's what that meant