There’s something magical about a child moving away from picture books and onto chapter books. It’s an exciting milestone. But it can feel a little daunting if you’re not sure where to turn.
These are the chapter books for 5 year olds I’d pick first: The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, Magnificent Mabel, The Absent Author, The Lonely Lion Cub and Meet Yasmin!
Some of them read beautifully out loud, and some are short enough for a 5 year old to try on their own. Each pick says which. They’re all filed at age 5 in the app, and our books for 5 year olds page has plenty more.
What a chapter book looks like at 5
At this age a chapter is a few pages long, and one chapter or one short story is about right for a bedtime. The writing is short and plain, and the stories still have proper plots.
The ones I’ve picked all have somebody good to spend time with, like a baby owl who asks “Now?” every time he’s sent off, or a girl who is quite sure she’s never to blame.
Five chapter books for 5 year olds
The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson
The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark
Plop is a fat, fluffy baby barn owl with enormous round eyes and very knackety knees, and he thinks the dark is nasty. His mother points out that he doesn’t know anything about the dark, he just doesn’t like it, and sends him down out of the nest to find out.
Each chapter is one trip. Plop lands badly, meets somebody, and comes home with one new thing to say about the dark. A little boy waiting for the fireworks tells him the dark is exciting.
It’s a gentle classic and it reads aloud beautifully, with words that are a pleasure to say. Nothing in it will frighten anybody, and it’s on the free shelf.
Magnificent Mabel and the Very Bad Birthday Party by Ruth Quayle
Magnificent Mabel and the Very Bad Birthday Party
Mabel knows exactly how the world should work, and the grown-ups in her life don’t always agree. There are three short stories in this one, and Mabel tells them herself.
In the first she decides she doesn’t want a big party, until Harry Cox tells her you only get presents if you have one. There are twenty-eight people in Class One, so the party is back on, and Harry Cox turns up dressed as a wolf. In the second, her cheese sandwiches and “measly apple” can’t compete with Elsa Kavinsky’s chocolate bar.
Mabel pinches that chocolate bar, and she always gets found out. Each story fits one bedtime. It’s the sixth Mabel book, though nothing in it needs the others, and it’s on the free shelf. We have five Mabel books.
A to Z Mysteries: The Absent Author by Ron Roy
A to Z Mysteries – The Absent Author
Dink wrote to the most famous mystery writer in the world and asked him to come to the Book Nook in Green Lawn. Amazingly, the answer was yes. Then eleven o’clock comes and goes, and the chair behind the big WELCOME sign stays empty.
Dink, his best friend Josh and Ruth Rose from next door follow the writer’s travel plans to the airport, the taxi and the hotel. Every stop crosses one thing off and adds a new question, and the clues are all there for a reader to spot.
The word kidnapped gets used a lot, but the three of them tease each other all the way through, so it never gets scary. It’s the first A to Z Mystery and we have twenty-one of them. The Canary Caper is on the free shelf.
Zoe’s Rescue Zoo: The Lonely Lion Cub by Amelia Cobb
Zoe’s Rescue Zoo 1 – The Lonely Lion Cub
Zoe Parker lives at the Rescue Zoo, where her mum is the vet. There’s an elephant in her garden and a mouse lemur called Meep asleep on her bed, and ever since her sixth birthday she’s been able to understand what animals say. Nobody else knows.
Then Great-Uncle Horace floats in by hot-air balloon with a lion cub he found alone on the Serengeti, and the cub is too sad to eat. Grumpy Mr Pinch has banned Zoe from the zoo hospital, so she creeps in after dark with a torch.
The cub tells Zoe that his family were taken by poachers. It’s told very simply and nothing is shown, and Meep, who thinks the Pacific is called the Specific, keeps the rest of it light. This is the first Rescue Zoo book, and we have twenty-one.
Meet Yasmin! by Saadia Faruqi
Meet Yasmin!
Yasmin lives with Mama and Baba, and Nana and Nani are never far away. There are four stories in this one, and in every one something small goes wrong and Yasmin works out her own way through.
She gets lost at the farmers’ market and finds Mama again with the crayon map she drew of her neighbourhood. She’s sure she’s rubbish at art, until she knocks her paints over and spots something in the splodges. And when she tries on Mama’s kameez and it rips, her grandparents fetch a glue gun and it ends in a fashion show.
Each story is three short chapters, so this is the one on the page a 5 year old is most likely to manage alone. Urdu words come up all the way through, with a word list at the back. Yasmin cries with relief when she finds Mama, and that worry is over within a page. We have two Yasmin books, and Yasmin the Soccer Star is the other.
Four more first chapter books
Ruby the Red Fairy is the very first Rainbow Magic book. Rachel and Kirsty meet on the ferry to Rainspell Island, find an old black pot in the woods, and hear something tapping inside. Jack Frost has blown all seven Rainbow Fairies out of Fairyland. We have eighteen Rainbow Magic books, and this copy is the American edition.
Billie B Brown, Collection 1 has ten short stories, and every one starts with fifteen freckles, six pairs of stripy socks and one banana sandwich. The sentences are as plain as they come, so a new reader can finish one in a sitting. They’re Australian, so expect soccer and bathers.
January Joker is the first Calendar Mysteries book, by the writer of A to Z Mysteries. Bradley wakes up to two small green creatures hopping about in the snow by the barn, and by morning the three big kids who were babysitting have vanished.
The Runaway Rumblebear is a cosy space story. Charlie lives on the planet Vela with a floating robot called Random, and the creature eating the settlers’ food turns out to be a lost baby the size of a puppy, who roars loudest when he’s happy.
When they want a bit more
Everything here is filed at 5 because the chapters are short. When they want a little more on each page, there’s chapter books for 7 year olds. For longer books for the whole family to share, there’s family read aloud books.
Just so you know…
Every book on this page is in Little Reads, a children’s library app with 3,000+ hand-picked books. The full library is £7.99 a month after a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime.
A free account comes with 100+ free books, and The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, Magnificent Mabel and the Very Bad Birthday Party and The Canary Caper are among them.