It’s a bit of an impossible task to whittle down over 600 books to the best ones. If you’re looking for books for 8 year olds, you’re definitely in the right place, because that’s how many we’ve got in our library.
Mind you, one thing that I think a lot of bookish people have in common is that they struggle with keeping their to-be-read pile to a reasonable height. In fact, if you’re anything like me, it’s usually taller than the read one.
So, that’s why I’ve put together this list of 22 to try and help you with that choice.
If they like a long run of books, I’ve also written about book series for 8 year olds and chapter books for 8 year olds.
Funny books for 8 year olds
Greg Heffley has just started middle school and reckons he’s about the 52nd or 53rd most popular kid in his year.
He puts his best friend Rowley at around 150.
Over the year there’s a mouldy slice of cheese on the playground that nobody will touch, a haunted house in Rowley’s basement and a school play where Greg is a tree with one line.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid is the first book, and every page looks like a school exercise book full of doodles.
Greg treats Rowley pretty badly and never notices, and your reader will. Once they’ve got through the lot, I’ve got what to read after Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Mr Twit hasn’t washed his face for years, and bits of old cornflake live in his beard.
Mrs Twit has a glass eye and a walking stick she mostly uses for hitting things.
They spend every day playing tricks on each other, from worms in the spaghetti to a frog in the bed.
The Twits is Roald Dahl at his most disgusting, and plenty of eight year olds find it hilarious.
The nastiness is the plot, though. The Twits keep monkeys upside down in a cage and put birds in a pie, so a child who feels things keenly about animals may find those chapters a lot. The rest of his shelf is in my best Roald Dahl books.
The Twits
Tuffy is a cat, and he’d like you to know the bird more or less threw itself into his mouth.
By Thursday he’s dragged next door’s rabbit into the house.
Rather than own up, Ellie’s mum and dad wash the rabbit, have Ellie blow-dry him and sneak him back into his hutch after midnight.
The Diary of a Killer Cat is by Anne Fine and it’s short enough for one sitting. Half the fun is spotting what Tuffy leaves out.
The whole joke rests on dead animals. Nothing is gory, but a very soft-hearted animal lover might end up on Ellie’s side.
The Diary of a Killer Cat
Class 4B never mean to cause chaos, and they always do.
Their teacher Mr Nidgett keeps threatening to give it all up and become a llama farmer.
Stanley tells it, and his best friend Manjit always has a foolproof plan that isn’t.
The Worst Class in the World is by Joanna Nadin and it has two stories in it. One is a biscuit sale that goes wrong and the other is Show and Tell with a rat called Fingers.
The jokes come round again and again, the class list of rules keeps getting longer, and nobody stays in trouble for long.
The Worst Class in the World
Magic and fantasy books for 8 year olds
Sophie can’t sleep, so she gets up to close the curtains and looks out instead.
Coming up the street is something four times taller than a person, blowing a long thin trumpet into the upstairs windows.
Then it turns its head and looks straight at her.
The BFG is one of our free books, and the giant’s words come out sideways. Human beans is only the start.
Sophie is carried off from her bed at night and spends a long stretch sure she’s about to be eaten, so the opening may be a lot for a reader who worries about the dark.
The BFG
In the year 511, a warlock called Merdyn the Wild is sentenced by his old rival from magic school, who reads out the wrong spell.
Merdyn lands in a shopping centre just off the M3 and decides the sliding doors are a dragon.
Rose Falvey, meanwhile, has gone viral for all the wrong reasons at the school talent show.
They meet in the woods, where Merdyn tries to eat her guinea pig.
The Wizard In My Shed is by Simon Farnaby and it’s one of our free books. The narrator keeps butting in with footnotes.
Rose’s dad died four years before the story starts and her mum is still grieving, so it may hit home for a reader who has lost someone close.
The Wizard In My Shed
Tomas is helping Grandad clear the end of the garden when he finds a spiky tree with one glowing fruit on it.
He takes it home, and in the middle of the night it goes pop.
Under his beanbag is a tiny red dragon who sneezes sparks.
The Boy Who Grew Dragons is by Andy Shepherd, and it turns out baby dragons poo a lot.
Tomas had a heart operation when he was little, and he wonders whether Grandad’s poorly heart is his fault. It’s a small part of the book, and Grandad is great company.
The Boy Who Grew Dragons
Ebenezer Tweezer looks about twenty and is actually five hundred and eleven.
At the top of his house lives a beast that brings up anything he asks for, as long as he keeps it fed.
Then the beast decides it wants a child.
The Beast and the Bethany is by Jack Meggitt-Phillips, and Ebenezer’s attempts to get hold of one are very funny. One of them gets him banned from the zoo for life.
A talking parrot is eaten in the first chapter, off the page, and the plot is a man shopping for a child to feed to a monster. If they loved The Twits, it’s the same sort of nastiness.
The Beast and the Bethany
Nine is a pickpocket, and one day at the market she steals the wrong thing.
It’s a tiny ornament shaped like a house, and when she taps the door knocker it grows eleven wonky storeys high.
Inside are a boy wizard in indigo pyjamas, a troll housekeeper in a frilly apron and a wooden spoon with a sword and a temper.
The House at the Edge of Magic is by Amy Sparkes, and Nine is rude to absolutely everyone, which is a lot of the fun.
Nine was found alone in a doorway when she was three and the man she steals for is horrible, so there’s some sadness under the jokes.
The House at the Edge of Magic
Animal and adventure books for 8 year olds
A cargo ship sinks in a hurricane and five crates wash up on a wild island.
Sea otters switch on the robot in the last one by accident.
Her name is Roz, and she has to learn the wilderness from scratch by watching animals who want nothing to do with her.
The Wild Robot is by Peter Brown, and some of its chapters are only a few lines long.
The wild isn’t softened. Roz causes a rockfall that kills two geese and smashes their eggs, and the whole story turns on it.
The Wild Robot
Varjak is a kitten who has never been over the garden wall.
When a man in shiny black shoes arrives with two silent black cats, Varjak’s grandfather sends him into the city to find a dog.
The trouble is, Varjak has no idea what a dog looks like.
Varjak Paw is by S. F. Said, and most of the early chapters end on a jolt.
The black cats attack Varjak’s grandfather in chapter five while Varjak watches, so a child who gets upset about animals being hurt might find it too much.
Varjak Paw
April’s dad is offered six months at a research station on an Arctic island, and she can’t believe her luck.
Everyone tells her there haven’t been bears up there for years.
Then she meets a polar bear, hungry and a long way from the rest of his kind.
The Last Bear is by Hannah Gold, and April has always got on better with animals than with people.
April’s mum died when she was four, which is set up in the first chapter, and there’s real worry about the melting Arctic.
The Last Bear
Rio’s mum is going into hospital, so he’s sent to California to stay with a grandmother he hasn’t seen for five years.
In a shoebox on his bed is his mum’s old sketchbook, full of drawings of a grey whale called White Beak.
He decides that if he can find the whale and send her photos, it might help her get better.
The Lost Whale is one of our free books, and it’s also by Hannah Gold.
Rio’s mum has a mental illness and his worry about her is very real. A museum visit also shows old whaling photos that upset him badly.
The Lost Whale
Danny and his dad live in an old caravan behind a filling station, with no electricity and a lavatory in a hut in the field.
They build kites and fire balloons and a cart called Soapo.
Then one night, when Danny is nine, he wakes up and his dad isn’t in the bunk above him.
Danny the Champion of the World is by Roald Dahl and it’s one of our free books.
Danny’s mum died when he was a baby, which the first line tells you, and the poaching talk includes keepers with shotguns. For afterwards, there’s what to read after Roald Dahl.
Danny the Champion of the World
Mystery and spooky books for 8 year olds
Dinah Glass moves in with a new family, and nobody tells her anything about the school.
The children walk there without laughing, and every one of them stops to comb their hair at the gates.
Nobody runs. Ever.
The Demon Headmaster is by Gillian Cross, and it’s scary without a single monster in it.
Dinah’s parents died when she was a baby and she grew up in a children’s home, which is told briskly in chapter two.
The Demon Headmaster
Amanda and Josh’s family have moved into a free house in a town called Dark Falls.
Dead leaves cover the front garden in July.
Then curtains start moving at shut windows, and Amanda sees a boy in her doorway who’s gone a second later.
Welcome to Dead House is the first Goosebumps book, with plenty of brother and sister bickering between the scares.
It’s properly spooky, with a nightmare about the family as skulls eating bones at dinner, so a jumpy reader might want it as a daytime book. If they get hooked, I’ve got books like Goosebumps.
Goosebumps 1 – Welcome to Dead House
Hal is sent off with his train-mad Uncle Nat on the royal steam train’s very last journey to Scotland.
On board there’s a film star, a countess with five fluffy dogs in diamond collars and a loud businessman off the telly.
Then a diamond brooch goes missing, and Hal gets the blame.
The Highland Falcon Thief is by M. G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman. Hal sketches everyone on the train, so your reader can line up the suspects with him.
As mysteries go there’s not much to worry about. Hal’s mum is in hospital having his baby sister, and one grown-up is unkind to a dog.
The Highland Falcon Thief
Maximilian has spent his whole life on a red velvet cushion, eating salmon soufflé.
Then he chases one mouse too many and ends up alone in London at night.
He becomes the mouse-catcher at the Theatre Royal, just as a star soprano arrives with twenty-six hatboxes and stops speaking.
Max the Detective Cat: The Disappearing Diva is by Sarah Todd Taylor, and Max spots the clues the humans miss.
The start is sad. The maid who’s meant to drown Max can’t do it, and his old owner kicks him out of the way. He finds better friends after that.
Max the Detective Cat: The Disappearing Diva
Real-life stories for 8 year olds
Tracy is ten and has been given a book to fill in her life story.
She treats every heading as an argument.
Her favourite colour is blood red. She never cries, it’s hay fever. And her mum is coming to get her any day now.
The Story of Tracy Beaker is by Jacqueline Wilson, and Tracy gives away far more than she means to.
Tracy is in care because her mum’s boyfriend hit her, and a foster mother used to smack her. It’s all backstory, told in passing. If she’s a hit, there’s books like Jacqueline Wilson.
The Story of Tracy Beaker
Dennis is twelve and the best striker in his school team.
Football is the only time his dad hugs him.
His mum left a couple of years ago, and he keeps one photo of her in a yellow dress covered in flowers.
When he meets Lisa, the coolest girl in school, there’s soon an orange sequinned dress and a lot of giggling.
The Boy in the Dress is by David Walliams, and under the jokes it’s about a family that has stopped talking.
Dennis’s brother uses an old slang insult for gay people, and there are jokes about the dad’s weight. The book is firmly on Dennis’s side. The rest are in my best David Walliams books.
The Boy in the Dress
Jaz is in Year 6, plays left striker and has a record of thirty-three keepy-uppies.
Her mum and dad have started arguing, and Jaz makes deals with herself to stop the rows.
When a cinnamon and chilli mix-up gets her banned from the dance showcase, she decides to start a girls’ football team instead.
Jaz Santos vs the World is by Priscilla Mante, and Jaz tells you to boo whenever her enemy turns up.
The rows at home are real, and a small fire while Jaz is out ends with a firefighter warning her parents.
Jaz Santos vs the World
Pickles is a dog, and he’s sure he’s a better footballer than his best friend Elsie.
Elsie’s team wins a chance to play at half-time in the World Cup final at Wembley, partly thanks to a video of Pickles.
Then Dad loses his job, and the World Cup trophy is stolen.
The Dog That Saved the World (Cup) is by Phil Earle. Pickles doesn’t always understand what’s going on, so your reader is a step ahead of him.
It looks properly at money worries. Dad skips meals so Elsie can eat, and they move somewhere Elsie is frightened of. For more football, I’ve got children’s football books.
The Dog That Saved the World (Cup)
More books for 8 year olds
Those 22 are somewhere to begin. Every other book for this age is further down the page, and each one has been hand-picked.
If it’s Christmas they’re after, I’ve got Christmas books for 8 year olds. And for the whole school year, there’s my Year 4 reading list.
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