Are you there God? It's me Margaret. & Others???

Question

My daughter just turned 11 and has just finish reading Are you there God? It's me Margaret. She loved it! (I know she would).Now we are developing a pre-teen book list for her. Anyone have suggestions as to what we should add? She wants books that are simmilar to that one. I would prefer not too much sexual content. She also enjoys Harry Potter, and The Cheetah Girls series. If anyone can think of a couple of titles she can read, please let me know. I'm going to let her choose the winner for "Best Answer" so a brief description of the title or a comment on why she would love the book would be great.

Answer 1

I manage a bookstore and we get this kind of question all the time. Parents and kids wanting good books, that are fun to read but without having negative messages about bullying and strong sexual material... aka The Gossip Girls. I really like to get them reading series at that age so that they have somewhere to go with their reading.

Some books and authors that we suggest are:

-Annie Bryant: The Beacon Street Girls:The Beacon Street Girls is a series of children's books based in Brookline, Massachusetts. The stories focus around five girls who all live around Beacon Street in Brookline and are in the same middle school class. The girls come from varied backgrounds and all have distinct personalities. The series aims at promoting healthy images and lifestyles for 9-13 year old girls. Offers fashion, fiction and fun with aspirational role models.

-Anne Brashares: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is a series with the first novel written in 2001. The story is about four best friends, who have their first summer apart in all of their sixteen years. Then, when a magical pair of jeans comes into their life, their summer turns upside down.

-Susan Juby: Alice I Think Series: Ever since Alice arrived at first grade dressed as a hobbit and endured a week of increasingly violent peer rejection, she has been home schooled by her hippie mom and indifferent dad, leaving her with what her therapist calls "a shocking poverty of age-appropriate real-life experience." Now Alice’s inept new therapist, Death Lord Bob, has cornered her into agreeing to go to the public high school. Actually, this fits right in with Alice’s career aspirations to become a cultural critic, and her eighties style statement would be working out pretty much all right (especially after she gets a great haircut somewhat by accident) if it weren’t for her old nemesis Linda, now grown seriously homicidal, and her two head banger henchmen. Alice’s sensible observations are a rich source of humor in this very funny first novel, as she tries to get her life together in spite of the peculiar aberrations of the "normal" teen and adult population of Smithers, a small ingrown town in British Columbia.

-Scott Westerfeld: The Uglies, The Pretties and The Specials:
From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 6 Up–Tally Youngblood lives in a futuristic society that acculturates its citizens to believe that they are ugly until age 16 when they'll undergo an operation that will change them into pleasure-seeking "pretties." Anticipating this happy transformation, Tally meets Shay, another female ugly, who shares her enjoyment of hoverboarding and risky pranks. But Shay also disdains the false values and programmed conformity of the society and urges Tally to defect with her to the Smoke, a distant settlement of simple-living conscientious objectors. Tally declines, yet when Shay is found missing by the authorities, Tally is coerced by the cruel Dr. Cable to find her and her compatriots–or remain forever "ugly." Tally's adventuresome spirit helps her locate Shay and the Smoke. It also attracts the eye of David, the aptly named youthful rebel leader to whose attentions Tally warms. However, she knows she is living a lie, for she is a spy who wears an eye-activated locator pendant that threatens to blow the rebels' cover. Ethical concerns will provide a good source of discussion as honesty, justice, and free will are all oppressed in this well-conceived dystopia. Characterization, which flirts so openly with the importance of teen self-concept, is strong, and although lengthy, the novel is highly readable with a convincing plot that incorporates futuristic technologies and a disturbing commentary on our current public policies. Fortunately, the cliff-hanger ending promises a sequel.–Susan W. Hunter, Riverside Middle School, Springfield, VT

-Cathy Hopkins Mates Dates series: It's always an adventure with Lucy, Izzie, Nesta and TJ as they navigate the ups and downs of being teenagers. But with laughter, fun, and a whole lot of romance, the four manage to stick together through it all.

Anyways just a few that I'm throwing out there. I hope that she finds them interesting!

Happy Reading!

Answer 2

There are a few that I remember reading as a child that are also by Judy Blume:

Blubber. Its about a young girl who is a bit overweight trying to fit in at school.

The Fudge books and Otherwise known as Sheila the Great I read these and so has my 9 year old.

and another one that I'm pretty sure she wrote but I can't rembember the title. It might be Crazy Eights because thats the central character's favorite card game. Anyway its about this girl who has braces on her legs. She spends a couple years writing back and forth to a pen pal but makes up all this great stuff she's done such as being a star athlete because she's afraid the other girl won't like her because of the braces. Then one summer the pen pal comes for a visit.

Another book she might like is Flipped, not sure of the author, my 10 year old brought it home a few weeks ago. Its about these two kids ( a boy and a girl) who first meet when he moves into the house next door when the kids are 6 and chronicles their lives together through high school. It flips back and forth from his and her points of view. Its really funny, she thinks he's the cutest thing ever the first time she sees him, and he spends the first few years trying to avoid her as much as possible.

To Cynthia, the Babysitters Club books are by Ann M. Martin. Source read them as a child, both my kids have read several, and have a few on the shelf.

To awanderingelf, no, the classics are alive and well in our house. Tell your daughter she is missing some great books. My daughters have enjoyed Little Women, Little House on the Prairie, Gulliver's Travels, A Little Princess, the Narnia books, and The Wind in the Willows. One of them started reading The Secret Garden.

Back to original question, you might also try some of those classics or some older series such as Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, or the Hardy Boys. Bobbsey Twins are a bit young.

Answer 3

My daughter just turned 12, and she reads all the time. Lately she has started lifting books off of MY bookshelves, which I admit makes me a little nervous. lol But she brings some good books home from the school library: Inkspell and Inkheart, those would be fantasy books. Rowan Hood, that one was about Robin Hood's daughter. The Tale of Despereaux, I'm not sure about that one, I think it's about a mouse and a princess.
There's a series of books, I think it's called the Warriors by Erin Hunter. The first book is called Into the Wild. The 'warriors' are cats.
I should be able to come up with a lot more for you, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment! Sorry.

I remember some of the books that I read, not sure of what age though: the Anne of Green Gables books, the Little House books, the Wizard of Oz, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Black Beauty, Little Women, Alice in Wonderland. Of course, by now those are absolutely ancient and probably not of interest to this generation. I know my daughter refuses to even consider reading them! LOL

Answer 4

-The Protector of The Small series by Tamora Pierce.
It chronicles the story of Kel, a girl who wants to become a knight.The only problem is that there's only one female knight in all the land and no one is interested in seeing more. Kel has to work twice as hard as everyone else to prove herself to everyone. Along the way she make friends with all sorts of animals. A flock of sparrows, a maimed dog, and a baby griffon are just the beginning. Also by Tamora Pierce the Circle of Magic series, The Lioness series and and the Immortals series.

-The Babysitters Club series by Francis Pascal
The series is a real classic. Its the story of 4 girls, Kristy Thomas, Dawn Schaffer, Stacy McGill, and Claudia Kishi, who start their own babysitting business. I swear I spent my allowance from ages 11-14 solely on Babysitter's Club books.

-The American Girls series.
Each set of stories tells the tale of a specific time in place in American history. The characters are good and best of all you learn all sorts of interesting things.

Tip: I recommend getting your daughter a subscription to a magazine. Kids love getting mail!! Plus she'll have something educational to look forward to every month. Find out what interest her. When I was 11 I liked cartoons and video games so my mom subscribed to Disney Adventures and EGM for me.

Answer 5

Try the inheritence books.

they're a trilogy, but then the first two are

Eragon
and
Eldest.

if she like HP, maybe it's because of the fantansy. These books have dragons and magic, so she'd probably like them.


2. she liked cheetah girls probably becuase it's a "girl thing"

try the judy bloom books