At around 8 years old, I’d often have parents come to me saying “I have fallen out of the habit of reading to my child at bedtime.”
Sometimes it was because their child had taken the book upstairs and shut the door (and possibly told them to go away, nicely).
So, let’s get down to it. Chapter books for 8 year olds that they’ll read to themselves. My five are Jo Jo Makoons, A Piglet Called Truffle, Borgon the Axeboy, Wilf the Mighty Worrier and The Great Cheese Robbery. Each one starts a series, and each one lives on our books for 8 year olds shelf.
What changes between 7 and 8
The books get longer (but honestly, not by much). Chapters stretch to ten or fifteen pages. The pictures thin out to one every few pages instead of one every spread. And the hero is usually about their age, with a problem that’s theirs to sort out (a pig, a pirate crew, an evil neighbour called Alan… yes, really, Alan).
What doesn’t change is the series thing. They can still find a character they love and want to carry on to the next one. Then the one after that. Then, if you’re lucky, all fourteen…
Whilst it can feel like the end of an era when reading becomes more of an independent adventure, it doesn’t mean those magic moments have to end completely.
A shared reading experience doesn’t revolve entirely around reading the actual book. Sometimes these moments are created in the discussions, conversations or reimaginings of the books after reading.
When I eventually found my way to reading independently at this age, I’m sure it broke my mum’s heart that the shared bedtime story bit had come to an end. But what followed was a lot of “you’ll NEVER believe what happened in my book today…”. Cue me spending hours talking my mum’s ear off as we walked around Safeway on a Saturday morning (core memories right there).
So if the book your 8 year old has taken upstairs looks a bit young to you, you’re looking at the exact thing I watched work for a decade.
Five chapter books for 8 year olds
Jo Jo Makoons: The Used-to-Be Best Friend by Dawn Quigley
Jo Jo Makoons: The Used-to-Be Best Friend
Best friend drama. Which at 8 is basically all of the drama.
Jo Jo Makoons Azure moves through the world a little differently than anyone else on her Ojibwe reservation. Even though Jo Jo loves her number one best friend, Mimi (who is a cat), she’s worried that she needs to figure out how to make more friends. Because Fern, her best friend at school, may not want to be friends any more.
Short chapters, drawings on most pages, and Jo Jo’s voice does the talking. Anyone who has come home with “she’s not my friend any more” and been fine by Tuesday will get it.
A Piglet Called Truffle by Helen Peters
A Piglet Called Truffle
For the ones who’ve asked for a pet roughly nine hundred times.
Jasmine’s dad is a farmer, and her mum is a large-animal vet, so Jasmine spends a lot of time caring for animals and keeping them out of trouble. When Jasmine sees a tiny, unloved piglet left to fend for itself, she knows it will die without her help. So she smuggles it home to her farm to nurse it back to health. But she can’t keep Truffle forever, and then, one stormy night, disaster strikes.
It’s the first Jasmine Green book, with black-and-white drawings by Ellie Snowdon, and A Sheepdog Called Sky comes next. Expect requests for a pet pig.
Borgon the Axeboy and the Dangerous Breakfast by Kjartan Poskitt
Borgon the Axeboy 1 – Borgon the Axeboy and the Dangerous Breakfast
Properly daft. Barbarians, dragons, breakfast.
Borgon the Axeboy is the last barbarian in the Lost Desert and he’s on a mission to track down the MOST DANGEROUS breakfast ever. He sets out to find the scariest dragon on the plains, but his annoying neighbour insists on tagging along. Grizzy is a little savage and far too nosey for her own good. But their adventure turns to peril when breakfast draws near.
Three Borgon books, all at this age, with The Prince’s Shadow second.
Wilf the Mighty Worrier Saves the World by Georgia Pritchett
Wilf the Mighty Worrier Saves the World
Funniest of the five, with a villain called Alan.
Wilf worries about everything. He is a Mighty Worrier. And now the most evil man in the world has moved in next door. When Alan, a self-styled Evil Lunatic, arrives with his grumpy robot sidekick and his silent right-hand-dog, Kevin Phillips, Wilf realises that only he can stop Alan’s ridiculous yet still Quite Evil plan to destroy the world.
Book one of three at this age (Wilf the Mighty Worrier Battles a Pirate is next). The lists of things Wilf is worried about are the best bit.
The Great Cheese Robbery by Chris Mould
The Great Cheese Robbery: Book 1
It’s The Borrowers, but make it pirates.
In the junk shop at the end of the street is a dusty old ship in a bottle. And when the world isn’t watching, a tiny pirate crew come out of the ship to explore. When the skirting-board mice kidnap Jones, the ship’s cat, and ransom him for cheese, the Pocket Pirates spring into action. But to get the cheese, they must venture to the freezing cold place where it’s always winter. The place called Fridge.
First of the Pocket Pirates, and The Great Drain Escape is at this age too.
Four more worth knowing about
Just William is where I’d send an 8 year old who wants something that feels older without being older. William and the Outlaws plan a day of non-stop adventure, and William is meant to be babysitting (there are fourteen at this age, which is a lot of babysitting).
Junie B. Jones is the big American series, eighteen of them, and it starts with her first day at school and a bus she refuses to get back on. My Granny’s Great Escape by Jeremy Strong has Nicholas’s granny falling for the elderly Hell’s Angel next door, to his dad’s horror. And The Diary of a Killer Cat by Anne Fine is Tuffy the cat explaining, at length, why the dead bird was not his fault (four more Killer Cat books follow).
If they’d rather have shorter chapters
No drama. Our chapter books for 7 year olds list is the same idea with shorter chapters and more pictures, and plenty of 8 year olds are perfectly happy there. And if the reading still happens at bedtime with you doing the voices, short chapter books for bedtime is the list for that.
If they’re tearing through them
Then Just William is the step-up, and after that it’s the long series. Books like Magic Tree House for the adventure reader, books like The 13-Storey Treehouse for the one who wants the jokes to keep coming.
Beyond that, the fat books start on our books for 9 year olds shelf.
Just so you know…
Little Reads is a library app for children who already read for fun. 3,000+ hand-picked books, including everything on this page. It’s £7.99 a month after a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime. There are 100+ free books on a free account, Jo Jo Makoons among them.
The honest bit. We don’t teach reading and we don’t do levels. If what you’re after is help with the reading itself, that’s a different kind of app, and a good one will say so on the tin.
But an 8 year old who reads to themselves and has run out? Bring them here.