Children's Fantasy & Science Fiction!!

[Lacedaemonian]

I have been searching for quality fantasy and science fiction books for children aged between 7 and 9. I am particularly looking for a description of a fantastical place/location/city with heavy use of adjectives but appropriate for this age group.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Help me to help my wife to indoctrinate generations of children into loving our favourite genres.

[Teresa Edgerton]

The obvious answer would be the two series The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis, and The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander.

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, by Alan Garner is other classic.

The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau , would be good for the nine-year-old, not so sure about the seven-year-old unless your wife is reading the books to the children.

Ordinarily I could probably think of dozens of books, but my memory does not appear to be working at the moment.

[pyan]

Un Lun Dun, by China Miéville fits most of the spec, but may be just a little more YA than childrens.

How about the His Dark Materials trilogy from Phillip Pullman - Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass?

[Teresa Edgerton]

Originally Posted by pyan

How about the His Dark Materials trilogy from Phillip Pullman - Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass?

For a seven-year-old? Those books seem far more suited to YA readers to me.

However, your mention of Pullman makes me think of two of his that might appeal to children 7-9:

Clockwork
and
Count Karlstein

[BookStop]

Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert o'Brien
I second City of Ember; it's a good book for the nine year old especially.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Catwings

[kurzon]

For some very classic kids' fantasy, you could try Norton's "Magic" series, eg.

Lavender-Green Magic (Magic Books) by Andre Norton - 9780765353016 at The Book Depository

They're all stand-alones based on kids meeting something magical.

[nixie]

Garh Nix, Keys to the Kingdom are one of my nephew's favourite reads

[J Riff]

Thank god our parents never force fed us kiddy sciFi. From grade 2, when reading became easier, I recall Keith Laumer, Fredric Brown, Cordwainer Smith and the like. Didn't get a lot of it, but it accelerated reading skills bigtime.

[Teresa Edgerton]

No, my parents never force-fed me anything; they left me to read what I liked. Unfortunately, I was in such a hurry to read things that were written for older readers, I missed out on a tremendous amount of excellent fiction written for young readers. (Some of it I missed out on because the authors didn't get around to writing it until after I was an adult ... only just excusable in those cases where the writers weren't even born yet.) I read some of those books later and enjoyed them very much, but as a child I know they would have enraptured me.

Some of the best and most imaginative science fiction and fantasy being produced right now is written for young readers. It would be a pity to deny myself the pleasure of reading them if I thought that children's books were beneath anyone over the age of seven.

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Hehe. I feel that way about the Harry Potter series, TE, but beyond that, everything is fair game to me. (Well, almost everything, I suppose. I've tried getting through Narnia but I was never really in the mood for it.) Some silly stuff that could potentially be for children that I would read is out there. Dark Castle, White Horse for one comes to mind-can't for the life of me remember who wrote the stories, though......


Ah, yes. It was by Tanith Lee.

[Chel]

The Narnia books are awesome for 7-8 year olds - over this schoolyear I've read them at work, the kids love it.

My husband swears by The Hobbit as well. His first-grade teacher read it in class, and it had a huge impact on how the hubby turned out. I'm quite happy with the result.