Books like Spirit Animals have one thing in common. A child and an animal who belong together.
Fans of these books won’t be satisfied with a book that has a dog in it as a token gesture. Instead the creature is the centre of the story. And the bond that creature has with the child is what makes them very special.
So, the five that I’d say are a good follow-up for these books are Dragon Rider, Dragon Storm: Mira and Flameteller, How to Heal a Gryphon, The Girl Who Speaks Bear and Wings of Fire: The Dragonet Prophecy.
The Spirit Animals books themselves live on our fantasy books for 9 year olds shelf, and that’s where most of these sit too, give or take a year.
What makes a book feel like Spirit Animals
In Erdas, children who turn eleven drink the Nectar at a special ceremony. Most of the time nothing happens. Once in a while a spirit animal appears and bonds with the child.
In Wild Born, Conor calls up a huge wolf with bright blue eyes. It looks exactly like Briggan, one of the legendary Great Beasts, which is supposed to be impossible. Far away, Abeke calls up a leopard and Meilin gets a giant panda when she was hoping for a tiger.
So it’s fantasy adventure with an unbreakable bond at the heart of the story. A handful of children from different corners of the world, each with an animal, and a war they have to face together.
It’s American, and the first series has a different author for every book. Brandon Mull, Maggie Stiefvater, Garth Nix and Sean Williams, Shannon Hale, Eliot Schrefer, Tui T. Sutherland and Marie Lu all take a turn.
My first port of call would of course be the sequels. There are sixteen Spirit Animals books in the library, counting Tales of the Great Beasts, which goes back to the legends behind the series, The Book of Shane and the Fall of the Beasts run. In Stormspeaker the four heroes have been framed for a murder they didn’t commit and are being hunted across Erdas. And it’s worth knowing that the content does get darker as the series goes on.
If it’s the animals they love more than the magic, the books like Warrior Cats list has Wild Born on it too.
Five books like Spirit Animals
Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke
Dragon Rider
Firedrake is a young silver dragon. Humans are coming to flood his valley, so he sets off to find the Rim of Heaven, a place far away in the East where dragons were once safe. Sorrel the brownie comes too, whether he likes it or not. In a big human city they meet Ben, a lonely boy who can’t believe he’s looking at a real, live dragon.
A boy and a dragon crossing the world together, which is Spirit Animals at its simplest. It sits at 9, the same age as the series. Cornelia Funke also wrote Inkheart, for when they’re a little older.
Dragon Storm: Mira and Flameteller by Alastair Chisholm
Dragon Storm – Mira and Flameteller
Mira is a dragonseer. She can call her dragon, Flameteller, into our world, and they live in secret in the Dragonseer Guild Hall, a huge cavern under the city of Rivven. The king hates dragons. Now his son has promised to search every building until he finds them. Meanwhile the lights in the Hall are flickering, Flameteller can hear a wrong note in the machinery, and Mira loves nothing more than working out how things work.
There are four Dragon Storm books, all at 8, so they suit a younger brother or sister who wants in on the dragons too. Tomas and Ironskin is on my How to Train Your Dragon list.
How to Heal a Gryphon by Meg Cannistra
How to Heal a Gryphon
A gentle one. A bond with a creature and no war.
Giada lives in Positano on the Amalfi Coast, where magic is real and her family are famous healers. In a week she turns thirteen and is meant to promise to heal people for the rest of her life. She’d much rather look after animals. And there’s a baby gryphon called Piccolina in her backpack.
It’s warm and sunny and full of food, and Giada is very good company. Worth knowing before you hand it over. Piccolina’s mamma is badly hurt, and the infected wound is described in a bit of detail. It sits at 8, but Giada is nearly thirteen, so a 9 year old won’t feel it’s too young.
The Girl Who Speaks Bear by Sophie Anderson
The Girl Who Speaks Bear
Yanka was found at two years old, standing in the snow outside a bear cave. Now she’s twelve and taller and stronger than anyone in her village. Everyone calls her Yanka the Bear. She doesn’t know where she was born or who her parents were, and the forest keeps pulling at her.
Yanka tells it herself, in the present tense, and it’s full of snow and frost and trees she can hear whispering. This one’s a step up at 10. For the reader who wants the bond with an animal in a quieter, snowier book.
Wings of Fire: The Dragonet Prophecy by Tui T. Sutherland
Wings of Fire 1: The Dragonet Prophecy
Tui T. Sutherland wrote one of the Spirit Animals books, and this is the first in her own dragon series.
Clay is a MudWing dragonet, raised in a cave under a mountain with four other young dragons. They were taken as eggs because a prophecy says five dragonets will end the war tearing their world apart. Clay doesn’t feel like a hero, though. He’d rather sleep than study, and he’d rather talk than fight.
The five of them bicker like brothers and sisters, and it’s funny. It’s also violent from the very first pages, and a queen makes her prisoners fight to the death in an arena. It sits at 10.
A few more if they’ve read those
Riders of the Realm: Across the Dark Water has a clan that fights on winged horses and a boy, Rahkki, who is afraid of heights. It’s the start of a series and it’s on my book series for 8 year olds list. The other three Dragon Storm books are there when Mira and Flameteller is done.
If it was Skandar that got them into bonded creatures first, my books like Skandar list goes further in that direction.
When they want something older
Northern Lights is the one I’d have ready. In Lyra’s Oxford everyone has a dæmon, an animal companion who is part of them. Lyra’s is Pantalaimon, and he changes shape whenever he likes. It sits at 10.
The books for 10 year olds shelf is next after that, and my book series for 10 year olds list has the long runs for a reader who wants something to get stuck into.
Just so you know…
Little Reads is a children’s library app, and every book on this page is in it, all sixteen Spirit Animals books included. 3,000+ hand-picked books for £7.99 a month after a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime. 100+ of the books are free on a free account.
It’s a library, so there are no lessons or levels in it. It’s for children who already read for the fun of it. If yours has finished Erdas and wants another world with an animal in it, this is where to look.