At 8 years old it’s not tricky getting them to read as such. It’s making sure they don’t have massive gaps between books.
They finish one they liked, reach for another, and there’s an empty shelf.
Something that can really help to close that gap is a cracking series.
These are my five book series for 8 year olds, each with enough books to last the winter, and all of them from our books for 8 year olds shelf. Just William, Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew, Frank Einstein, The Oregon Trail and Riders of the Realm.
I often found that the children who always had a book on the go were the ones halfway through a series. And there wasn’t a panic when it came to library lessons because they’d just pick up where they’d left off.
What a series does for an 8 year old
A good thing to look out for with a series is ensuring that the first book can work by itself. So if they get to the end and decide it’s not for them, they don’t feel disappointed.
Under every pick you’ll find the book to open first, a rough count of how many follow, and the child it’s for. The order they come in is on each author’s page, so I’ve left it out here.
Five book series for 8 year olds
Just William by Richmal Crompton
Just William 01 – Just William
Older than everything else here, but still the funniest.
William Brown is certain, at all times, that he is in the right. In the first story his aunt gives him a shilling and he spends half of it at the pictures, sitting through five films in a row. Everything he does for the rest of that day is one of those films (his father, nursing a headache, decides he’s gone mad).
Sixteen William books at this age (More William is next), and a lot of them are collections of short stories, so a child can read one William before tea and come back for another. The language will feel quite old, which for the right child is half the joke.
Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew: Zoo Crew by Carolyn Keene
Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew 14 – Zoo Crew
Thirty-five self-contained mysteries.
Nancy, George and Bess are at a three-day overnight camp at the local zoo, helping the zookeeper make toys for the animals. But the toys the girls make by day are disappearing at night, and everyone is a suspect.
This is Nancy Drew at 8, a long way from the teenage detective, and the Clue Crew and Clue Book stories stand completely alone. So start with whichever animal or festival or missing unicorn appeals (Unicorn Uproar is the missing unicorn one). If they’ve done The Famous Five, my books like The Famous Five list has an older vibe.
Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor by Jon Scieszka
Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor
For the child who fancies themself as a bit of a scientist.
Frank loves figuring out how the world works by building household contraptions that are part science, part imagination and definitely unusual. Then a lightning storm brings his inventions, the robots Klink and Klank, to life. They’re not exactly the ideal lab partners, but they help Frank try to get his Antimatter Motor working, until his archnemesis T. Edison steals them for his doomsday plan.
Four Frank Einstein books at this age (the Electro-Finger is next), each with more robot trouble from Klink and Klank and some real science smuggled in around the edges.
The Oregon Trail: The Race to Chimney Rock by Jesse Wiley
The Oregon Trail 1 – The Race to Chimney Rock
The one where the reader is in charge.
It’s 1850 and your child is the young pioneer, heading west from Independence with Ma, Pa, little Samuel, Hannah and Archie the dog. The first stop is a landmark called Chimney Rock, and every few pages they decide what happens next (and the book tells them which page to turn to).
Four books take them all the way to Oregon (Danger at the Haunted Gate is next), and they only get there if they make the right choices. The wrong ones can end the journey, and it’s said plainly (by book three you can die of dysentery). Some children find that upsetting. The ones who like being in charge just go back and try the other road.
Riders of the Realm: Across the Dark Water by Jennifer Lynn Alvarez
Riders of the Realm – Across the Dark Water
For the child who has outgrown ponies.
Deep in the jungles of the Realm, the Sandwen clan live among spit dragons and warring giants, kept safe by their winged battle horses. Twelve-year-old Rahkki is a stable groom, looking after his brother’s winged stallion. The clan believe every wild pegasus in the land has been tamed, until a wild herd flies over the village.
Three books at this age (Through the Untamed Sky is next), and there are battles in them, so it’s for the fantasy reader more than the pony one.
Three more, and one I’ve sent elsewhere
Survivor Diaries nearly had a card here. It’s four books, each a different disaster (Overboard! is the first, a whale watch where the boat capsizes), and the author is a survival expert, so what the children do to stay alive is what you’d actually do. Not a cosy read. It’s filed at 9 in the app, though, so it’s one for the year after. Norby and Yobo’s Great Adventure is Jeff and his mixed-up robot on a photo-safari in Earth’s distant past, and there are nine Norby books at this age, so start anywhere.
Everyday Angel (New Beginnings is the first of three) is Aria, who looks like an ordinary twelve-year-old with coppery hair and a passion for cupcakes, and isn’t. And Junie B. Jones has nineteen books at this age, but she’s the lead pick on my books like Judy Moody list, so I’ve sent her there.
If the chapters still feel long
Then my chapter books for 8 year olds list is the place, where the books are shorter and the pictures haven’t gone yet. Most of those start a series too.
If they’re already looking at the next shelf
The books for 9 year olds shelf is the next one along, and my book series for 10 year olds list is this page two years on (it opens with Beetle Boy). A fair few 8 year olds will manage the first one or two on it already.
Just so you know…
All five series are in Little Reads, right up to the last book we hold. It’s a children’s library app with 3,000+ hand-picked books, £7.99 a month after a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime. The free account has 100+ free books in it as well.
We’re a library, not a scheme. There’s no test at the end of each book and no level to move up, and if it’s the reading itself that needs help, this isn’t the app for it. For the 8 year old who has to know what happens next, and then what happens after that, this is the shelf.