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Ages 5–7 · four books · oldest to newest
Ruth Stiles Gannett · 1948
Elmer Elevator packs chewing gum, lollipops, and rubber bands, then stows away to Wild Island to rescue a baby dragon — outsmarting tigers and crocodiles with not…
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Mary Pope Osborne · 1992
Jack and Annie find a tree house stacked with books — and when Jack points at a picture of a dinosaur, the whole tree house spins them back to the time of the din…
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Tracey West · 2014
Eight-year-old Drake is whisked to the king's castle to train as a Dragon Master — if he can figure out what his moody Earth Dragon, Worm, can actually do.
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Shannon Hale & Dean Hale · 2014
Princess Magnolia is prim and perfect — until the monster alarm rings and she slips into her secret identity to fight monsters in disguise.
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Ages 5–7 · four books · oldest to newest
Roald Dahl · 1966
When the girl next door gets angry, her magic finger zaps people — and this time it turns a duck-hunting family into ducks, while giant ducks move into their house.
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Ursula K. Le Guin · 1988
Mrs. Jane Tabby can't explain why her four kittens were born with wings — but when the alley gets dangerous, they fly away to find a safe place to land.
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Asia Citro · 2017
Zoey discovers she can see magical creatures — and when a sick baby dragon shows up at the barn, she uses real science experiments to figure out how to help it.
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Rebecca Elliott · 2020
Bo Tinseltail keeps a diary about life at Sparklegrove School — and this week a new unicorn arrives who doesn't know what his unicorn power is yet.
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Ages 5–7 · four books · oldest to newest
Gertrude Chandler Warner · 1942
Four orphaned siblings make a home inside an abandoned boxcar in the woods — finding dishes in the dump, damming a stream for a fridge, and taking care of each ot…
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Marjorie Weinman Sharmat · 1972
Kid detective Nate the Great — fueled by pancakes — takes the case of Annie's missing painting and follows the clues right through the neighborhood.
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David A. Adler · 1980
Cam has a photographic memory — she says 'click' and remembers everything she sees. When diamonds vanish from the jewelry store, her mental snapshots crack the case.
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Ron Roy · 1997
Dink invites his favorite mystery writer to visit Green Lawn — but the author vanishes before the book signing, and Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose have to find him.
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Ages 5–7 · four books · oldest to newest
Arnold Lobel · 1970
Five little stories about two best friends — losing a button, waiting for a letter, being brave-ish — told with more heart per page than almost any book ever made.
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Kate DiCamillo · 2005
Mercy is a pig who lives like a queen with Mr.
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Abby Hanlon · 2014
Dory's big siblings won't play with her, so she plays with her imaginary monster friend Mary — and battles the terrifying Mrs.
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Aaron Blabey · 2015
Mr.
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Ages 5–7 · four books · oldest to newest
Beverly Cleary · 1968
Ramona Quimby starts kindergarten ready to love it — but between the alluring boing-boing curls of Susan and the mystery of the 'dawnzer lee light,' being good is…
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Ann Cameron · 1981
Julian tells stories — about lemon pudding that 'whipped' itself away, a fig tree that eats leaves, and how he made his very first best friend.
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Annie Barrows · 2006
Bean thinks the quiet new girl across the street looks boring — until a prank gone wrong throws them together and Ivy turns out to have a wand, a spell book, and…
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Rebecca Elliott · 2015
Eva Wingdale plans a spring festival for the whole class — then panics when it's too much, and learns that letting friends help isn't giving up.
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Ages 8–10 · four books · oldest to newest
Jean Craighead George · 1959
Sam Gribley runs away to the Catskill Mountains and teaches himself to live inside a hollowed-out tree — training a falcon, making acorn flour, and surviving a wh…
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Gary Paulsen · 1987
After a plane crash leaves him alone in the Canadian wilderness, thirteen-year-old Brian has nothing but a hatchet — and fifty-four days to figure out fire, food,…
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Rick Riordan · 2005
Percy discovers he's the son of a Greek god and has ten days to find Zeus's stolen lightning bolt before war breaks out on Olympus.
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Peter Brown · 2016
A robot named Roz wakes up alone on a wild island and has to learn from the animals to survive, slowly becoming part of their world.
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Ages 8–10 · four books · oldest to newest
C.S. Lewis · 1950
Four siblings step through a wardrobe into Narnia, a land trapped in endless winter, and join a great lion to break the White Witch's spell.
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Norton Juster · 1961
Bored Milo drives his toy car through a mysterious tollbooth into a kingdom where words and numbers are at war, accompanied by a watchdog named Tock (who literall…
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Jessica Townsend · 2017
A cursed girl is whisked to a secret city and must pass four impossible trials to join a mysterious society, with help from a knack she doesn't know she has.
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B.B. Alston · 2021
Amari gets a secret invitation to a hidden bureau of supernatural affairs and trains among magicians and creatures while hunting for her missing brother.
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Ages 8–10 · four books · oldest to newest
E.L. Konigsburg · 1967
Claudia and her little brother run away — TO the Metropolitan Museum of Art — where they sleep in an antique bed, bathe in the fountain, and stumble into an art m…
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Ellen Raskin · 1978
Sixteen strangers are named heirs in an eccentric millionaire's will — but to inherit, they must solve the puzzle of who killed him.
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Louis Sachar · 1998
Wrongly sent to a brutal desert camp where boys dig holes all day, Stanley uncovers that the warden is searching for something buried, and his own family curse ti…
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Stuart Gibbs · 2012
An ordinary math whiz gets recruited to a secret CIA spy academy and quickly realizes the place is far more dangerous than glamorous.
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Ages 8–10 · four books · oldest to newest
Louis Sachar · 1978
A school accidentally built thirty stories tall instead of sideways is home to absurd, hilarious one-chapter stories about its oddball students.
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Roald Dahl · 1988
A genius five-year-old with terrible parents and a headmistress who throws children discovers she can move things with her mind — and uses it to stage the best cl…
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Lemony Snicket · 1999
The three Baudelaire orphans are placed with the scheming Count Olaf, who is only after their fortune, and must use their wits to escape his plots.
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Jeff Kinney · 2007
Greg Heffley's illustrated journal of surviving middle school — the Cheese Touch, an embarrassing best friend, and schemes that never quite work out the way he dr…
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Ages 8–10 · four books · oldest to newest
E.B. White · 1952
Wilbur the pig is destined for the smokehouse until Charlotte, a grey spider with a brilliant vocabulary, starts weaving words into her web to save his life.
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Andrew Clements · 1996
Nick Allen invents a new word for pen — frindle — and it spreads from his classroom to the whole country, no matter what his dictionary-loving teacher does to sto…
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Kate DiCamillo · 2000
Opal adopts a big smiling stray dog from the supermarket, and one summer in a small Florida town, he introduces her to every lonely, wonderful person in it.
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Katherine Applegate · 2012
Ivan is a gorilla who has lived in a shopping-mall cage for twenty-seven years — until a baby elephant named Ruby arrives and he makes a promise that changes ever…
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Ages 11–13 · four books · oldest to newest
J.R.R. Tolkien · 1937
Bilbo Baggins likes his quiet life — until a wizard and thirteen dwarves sweep him into a quest across mountains and Mirkwood to face the dragon Smaug, picking up…
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Theodore Taylor · 1969
When his ship is torpedoed in 1942, Phillip is stranded on a tiny Caribbean island — blinded, and utterly dependent on Timothy, an old sailor he'd been raised to…
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Roland Smith · 2007
After getting arrested for climbing a New York skyscraper, fourteen-year-old Peak is shipped off to his estranged father — who wants to make him the youngest pers…
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Alan Gratz · 2017
Three kids, three eras — Josef fleeing Nazi Germany, Isabel fleeing Cuba in 1994, Mahmoud fleeing Syria in 2015 — three journeys that connect in ways none of them…
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Ages 11–13 · four books · oldest to newest
J.K. Rowling · 1997
An orphan in a cupboard under the stairs learns he's a wizard — and that the story of how his parents died isn't finished yet.
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Shannon Messenger · 2012
Sophie has always heard other people's thoughts — then a boy reveals she's not human at all, and she's swept into a hidden elvin world where dangerous secrets are…
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Kelly Barnhill · 2016
Every year the town leaves a baby in the woods for the witch — but the witch is kind, and one year she accidentally feeds a baby moonlight, filling her with dange…
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A.F. Steadman · 2022
Unicorns are real — and they're deadly, bonded to riders who race them.
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Ages 11–13 · four books · oldest to newest
Kate Milford · 2014
Milo's family runs an inn for smugglers, and it's supposed to be empty at Christmas — until five strange guests arrive in a snowstorm, each hiding a reason for be…
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James Ponti · 2016
Florian solves crimes with T.O.A.S.T.
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Varian Johnson · 2018
A letter in her grandmother's attic promises a fortune to whoever solves a decades-old puzzle — and pulls Candice into her town's buried history of injustice.
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James Ponti · 2020
Sara hacked the juvenile justice system — so instead of jail, she's recruited to a secret MI6 team of five kids who go where adult spies can't.
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Ages 11–13 · four books · oldest to newest
Carl Hiaasen · 2002
Roy follows a barefoot running boy and stumbles into a scheme to save burrowing owls from being bulldozed for a pancake house — with alligators, fake vandals, and…
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Tom Angleberger · 2010
Weird kid Dwight talks through a finger puppet — but Origami Yoda's advice is eerily wise, and Tommy compiles a case file to decide: is it real, or is Dwight secr…
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Gordon Korman · 2012
Troublemaker Donovan Curtis breaks a statue, and a paperwork mix-up hides him at the school for geniuses — where somehow the kid with no gifts becomes the one thi…
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Lincoln Peirce · 2019
Max wants to be a knight — inconvenient, since Max is a girl in the Middle Ages and her uncle just got kidnapped by an evil king.
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Ages 11–13 · four books · oldest to newest
Linda Sue Park · 2010
Two true-story threads: Salva, one of Sudan's 'lost boys,' walking across Africa to survive — and Nya, a girl who walks eight hours a day for water — until their…
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R.J. Palacio · 2012
Auggie Pullman was born with a facial difference and has never been to school — until fifth grade, when he walks into Beecher Prep and the story passes between hi…
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Kwame Alexander · 2014
Twin brothers rule the basketball court until a girl, a rift, and their father's failing heart change the game — told entirely in verse that moves like a fast break.
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Lynda Mullaly Hunt · 2015
Ally has hidden that she can't read behind six schools' worth of clever distractions — until a teacher sees the dyslexia, and the smart kid underneath it.
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