Books “for” Girls

44940 — “If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett

I grew up an almost incurable tomboy with two older sisters who liked makeup and nail polish and doing their hair. But I still love Anne of Green Gables.

The books I suggest here are fiction stories I think girls will like. Try them on your son, and he just might like them too. (Don’t forget to check out the lists for boys too. Some of the books over there are my favorite reads.) As always, if you have a book you want me to read, send an email and I’d love to check it out.

-rj

Ornamnets3

Kindergarten & 1st grade

note I include this list of books, aware that a Kindergartner is almost never ready to read these books alone. I encourage parents to read aloud or get books on CD.

Winnie the Pooh | A. A. Milne ills. E. H. Shepherd
The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter | Beatrix Potter
The Real Mother Goose | Blanche Fisher Wright
The Foot Book | Dr. Seuss
One Morning in Maine | Robert McCloskey
Sarah, Plain and Tall | Patricia MacLachlan (this books has several sequels, including Skylark and Caleb’s Story.)

2nd Grade

Charlotte’s Web | E. B. White (also consider his other excellent books, Stuart Little and Trumpet of the Swan)
The Wheel on the School | Meindert DeJong
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle | Betty MacDonald ills. Hillary Knight
Little House in the Big Woods | Laura Ingalls Wilder ills. Garth Williams
The Cabin Faced West | Jean Fritz
Ballet Shoes | Noel Streatfeild
The Boxcar Children #1 | Gertrude Chandler Warner
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon | Grace Lin

3rd-4th Grade

Mr. Popper’s Penguins | Richard and Florence Atwater ills. Robert Lawson
The Cricket in Times Square | George Selden ills. Garth Williams
Phoebe the Spy | Judith Berry Griffin
Mary Poppins | P. L. Travers
Misty of Chincoteague | Marguerite Henry ills. Wesley Dennis
A Little Princess | Francis Hodgson Burnett
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH | Robert C. O’Brien
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler | E. L. Konigsburg
Caddie Woodlawn | Carol Ryrie Brink

5th-6th Grade

The Borrowers | Mary Norton ills. Joe and Beth Krush
Out of the Dust | Karen Hesse
Roller Skates | Ruth Sawyer
My Louisiana Sky | Kimberly Willis Holt
The Blue Fairy Book | edited Andrew Lang ills. Henry J. Ford
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe | C. S. Lewis ills. Pauline Baynes
Island of the Blue Dolphins | Scott O’Dell
Our Only May Amelia | Jennifer L. Holm
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase | Joan Aiken

7th-8th Grade

Hope was Here | Joan Bauer
Anne of Green Gables | L. M. Montgomery (I highly recommend her Emily books and Jane of Lantern Hill, but the Anne books are classic)
Little Women | Louisa May Alcott
Bloomability | Sharon Creech
Nory Ryan’s Song | Patricia Reilly Giff
Beauty | Robin McKinley
A Wrinkle in Time | Madeleine L’Engle
The Witch of Blackbird Pond | Elizabeth George Speare
Tuck Everlasting | Natalie Babbitt

9th-12th Grade

The Goose Girl | Shannon Hale
Bright Island | Mabel Robinson
A Girl of the Limberlost | Gene Stratton-Porter
Anne Frank : The Diary of a Young Girl | Anne Frank
The Perilous Guard | Elizabeth Marie Pope
A Traveler in Time | Alison Uttley
Much Ado About Nothing | William Shakespeare
The Importance of Being Earnest | Oscar Wilde

College and Beyond

To Kill A Mockingbird | Harper Lee
Jane Eyre | Charlotte Brontë
Till We Have Faces | C. S. Lewis
Persuasion | Jane Austen
The Hiding Place | Corrie ten Boom
Murder on the Orient Express | Agatha Christie
Mistborn: The Final Empire | Brandon Sanderson

Busy Moms

My Ántonia | Willa Cather
Around the World in Eighty Days | Jules Verne
Jane of Lantern Hill | L. M. Montgomery
The Scarlet Pimpernel | Baroness Orczy
Of Mice and of Men | John Steinbeck
Phantom of the Opera | Gaston Leroux
The Princess Bride | William Golding
Emma | Jane Austen