Wanted! SFF book recommendations for a 6 year old.

Ensign Shah

Ensign Shah

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Dearest avid readers and literary whizz kids. I am wanting SFF recommendations for my 6 year old daughter. I never read SFF when I was a child and came in to it as a young adult so can't think of any! (n) She is a competent reader for her age and has just started on her own with simple chapter books. We read together too.

She is a very quiet girl and I'm hoping that the SFF world will fire the imagination.

Many thanks.
 
Is she old enough for the Animorphs series? A group kids meet an alien who gives them the ability to shapeshift into any animal they touch. They use this ability to fight alien slugs that are invading people's minds.

It's a fun adventure series, but light enough that it shouldn't be scary for young kids.

Edit: I just looked it up and the books are around a 3rd grade level. If she's an advanced reader or you are reading to her, it may be about right. I don't think there is much sci fi geared toward younger kids. I didn't get into the genre until around middle school.
 
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Have you started her on some of Enid Blyton's books yet? THE MAGIC FARAWAY TREE is one series that 6-year-old me absolutely loved and it's pure fantasy :)

NOTE: I was an advanced reader - reading Jane Austen and LOTR unabridged from age 11 onwards. So at 6 years old I could read Enid Blyton by myself. Is your daughter's reading ability around the same level?
 
 
Thank you so much! I didn't know where to start. We've read some Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl together. She's only just turned 6 but has a reading age of 8. She gets bored easily if it doesn't hold her attention from the start or has enough pictures. Her reading is good but her attention wavers.

We are reading Pippi Longstocking and Matilda at the moment. She has been brought up with Studio Ghibli and child friendly Tim Burton films (as any good parent should:LOL:,) so she loves magic and accepts the bizarre. She is more likely to pick a zombie over a Barbie! Will check some of these out. Thank you.
:inlove::inlove::inlove:
 
kythe said:
Is she old enough for the Animorphs series? A group kids meet an alien who gives them the ability to shapeshift into any animal they touch. They use this ability to fight alien slugs that are invading people's minds.

It's a fun adventure series, but light enough that it shouldn't be scary for young kids.

Edit: I just looked it up and the books are around a 3rd grade level. If she's an advanced reader or you are reading to her, it may be about right. I don't think there is much sci fi geared toward younger kids. I didn't get into the genre until around middle school.
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They sound amazing! Thank you.
 
Long Ago, Far Away Author: Murray Leinster

An intriguing book written in the 50s with a surprising grasp of future inventions. Some of the physics was rather heavy duty, but the premise was fun. Four children arrive in a spaceship that crashes in Antarctica. They speak no English, and nobody knows where they're from. They become the subject of an international uproar, with fears of conquest by their advanced civilization.
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http://manybooks.net/titles/leinsterm2389223892-8.html

psik
 
Well, not fictional, but sciency, there are the Who Would Win? books that my daughter started on at about that age -- a child who likes zombies might like the theoretical battles between Tarantula vs Scorpion, or Komodo Dragon vs King Cobra.

And there's the bizarre, macabre, surreal works of Edward Gorey. You might want to check those out before giving them to her, even if she does like zombies. We have an alphabet book of his, where each letter is about the gruesome death of a child. It's hilarious and quite creepy at the same time.

There's a book called Half Magic, by Edward Eager, that I loved as a child -- about some children who find a magic coin that grants half of each wish. And The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, about a boy who is given a tollbooth that gives him access to a magical land called the Kingdom of Wisdom -- it's very punny and full of sly math and language education as well.
 
You mentioned she is reading early chapter books. If there are too many words and not enough pictures in the suggestions above, have a look into Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre's work Cakes In Space. Jampires Sarah illustrated with David O'Connell. (As an illustrator, a lot of Sarah's work leans into young SFF so have a look on Amazon for all her other works)
At the risk of things being thrown at me because they are not "proper" books/sff, there's also Beast Quest, Rainbow Magic series (please don't buy buckets of them as they are formulaic, my then six year old spotted this very quickly, but they are a good gentle early read and led her in to the thicker, less pictured realms of Dahl) You've also go the early Fighting Fantasy novels.
 
My kids like the Astrosaurs by Steve Cole -- a looong series about dinosaurs having adventures in space. They're funny, which the kids enjoyed.

They also like: Scream Street by Tommy Donbavand, another series, though this time it's (mild!) horror with a boy hero who's a werewolf, and Vivian French's Robe of Skulls books. You could try the fabulous Shark-Headed Bear Thing books. They're very funny but I'm not sure what age range they're aimed at, exactly.

Diana Wynne Jones wrote some stuff for younger children, including Earwig and the Witch, but we haven't tried it yet. A good book for reading quickly, is The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl -- it's much shorter than most of his other books and has more pictures! The Mr Gum books are Dahl-like, but weirder.

My son adored Zita the Space Girl and the Amulet graphic novels too. Both of them have girl heroes. Zita is funnier and better for that age range; the Amulet ones are more mature in terms of themes (the first thing that happens is the father dies in a car crash -- some people I know encouraged their kids to skip that bit)
 
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When I was very small, my mum got me a book called Dinosaurs and All That Rubbish. It was about a man who flew to a different planet and found dinosaurs there, but in doing so made a lot of rubbish that had to be cleared up. It had great pictures by Michael Foreman. I loved that book.

There was also something called The Worst Witch, which I had read to me. I can remember that the heroine was called Mildred Hubble, and that I liked it a lot, but not much more than that. I think they're still quite popular, though.
 
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