My father's dragon
A young boy runs away from home to rescue an abused baby dragon held captive to serve as a free twenty-four hour, seven-days-a-week ferry for the lazy wild animals living on Wild Island.
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3recommend
4mentions
4people
2018–2022years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
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- (other readers: sorry, I know this post is going to be a bit obnoxiously long, but I didn't want to put it on a pastebin or some other external service and potentially have it disappear if someone wanted to reference it in the future. If you're not interested please feel free to collapse this!)
I actually asked my mom to compile a list of books she could remember, because a friend had kids and was getting to the age where they were starting to read too. Here's what she came up with (note, no particular order of difficulty or maturity here):
My Father’s dragon series
Where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein
A pizza the size of the Sun
Choose your own adventure books
The Great Brain
The Boxcar Children series
Captain Underpants
Roald Dahl books: The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/The Great Glass Elevator (not as good)
My Side of the Mountain
No More Dead Dogs
The Secret Garden
Bridge to Terabithia (Deals with death, a little older)
The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe
Across five Aprils (civil war historical fiction, older)
The Broken Blade (Voyageur) & Sequel
Island of the blue dolphins
The witch of blackbird pond
Johnny Tremaine (a bit older)
The sign of the Beaver
Charlotte’s Web
Because of Winn Dixie
Tuck Everlasting (sad at end)
Ruby Holler
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Treasure Island
The Pushcart War
Maniac Magee
Rascal
Frindle
Hatchet (Gary Paulsen)
Mr. Popper’s Penguins (young)
Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing (Juy Blume)
Pippi Longstocking
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (young)
A Wrinkle in Time
Moccasin Trail
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
From the Mixed Up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
The Egypt Game
The Phantom Tollbooth (young)
Holes (little older)
Sideways Stories from Wayside School (young)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Homer Price (easy reading)
The Indian in the Cupboard
Misty of Chincoteague (series)
Aesop’s Fables (young)
The Eye, the Ear, and the Arm
Redwall series
Watership Down
(I'll throw in the Discworld series too for kids that are getting a bit older! It's probably very readable for, say, an advanced 5th grader. I was tearing through all the redwall books and the Golden Compass series at that point and Discworld is probably comparable. Golden Compass wasn't finished then and The Amber Spyglass ended up being kind of a disappointment. I know I was reading Discworld by 7th grade for sure.)
- An oldie but goodie is "My Father's Dragon" which has three books that you can get in a single binding.
- I enjoyed My Father's Dragon so much! Also the Little House on the Prairie books, and then when she's a little older, everything by Tamara Pierce.
- We have four kids, but only three are special needs. Most of them were able to follow "adult" works from a fairly young age, but one of them was not until age 8; he struggled following simpler works (e.g. Gannett's My Father's Dragon series) in the first grade. Once it "clicked" though, he was great.
When I looked into it, I found similar stories from educators of verbal skills not clicking until the 3rd or 4th grade, followed by a rapid catch-up and then zero lag. According to most special-ed folks I talked to, if there are more specific issues at a younger age (e.g. problems with reading comprehension, but not auditory, or vice-versa) it can be indicative of a learning disability.
You are 100% true about reading to them from a young age (and not worrying too much about "hard" words; kids don't know which words are supposed to be hard unless you tell them) makes a big difference. Seeing kindergarteners from homes without a single book in them vs ones read to from an early age is rather eye-opening.
