SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I am going on holiday with my husband and 3 daughters. We are going to a private game farm (we live in south africa) and I want to read a book out lous in the evenings around the campfire. My kids ages are 5. 8 and 14.
My eldest daughter has read all the harry potters but wouldnt mind a re-read. I am also concidering The Golden Compass?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!

Thank you

My boys loved The Chronicles of Narnia at that age.

Thank you so much Gabi that is a good idea!!

The Golden Compass is great but might be too scary for a five year old. I would wait a couple years on that one.

The Phantom Tollbooth is a classic read aloud, although it requires kids (and adults) who aren't offended by bad puns and wordplay.

Hmm... It's going to require a lot of explaining for a 5 year old and probably some for an 8 year old, so perhaps I'm just finishing this note now for a future trip.

The Lightning Thief series is a great read out loud because it's funny.

Some SFF favorites for that age group that haven't been mentioned yet are:

Stardust
Redwall
Peter Pan
Charlotte's Web
Sandry's Book
The Hobbit or There and Back Again
James and the Giant Peach
The Borrowers

I just listened to Leviathan which was brilliantly read by Alan Cumming. I think it’s a perfect book to read aloud to girls that age, especially if you can do the accents.

Similarly, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a fun little adventure.

The former probably skews toward the 14-year-old while the latter skews more to the 5-year-old. Neither have any sex at all, while Leviathan has more actual violence, with deaths (it’s steampunk WWI), but the deaths are mostly offscreen. One of the main characters is the son of Franz Ferdinand, so “dead parents” is a feature. I don’t know if that’s traumatizing for younger kids.

I’ve just been reading Gaimans Odd and the Frost Giants to my 5 year olds and they seem to be enjoying it ... can’t speak to the teen tho

Rachel wrote: "I’ve just been reading Gaimans Odd and the Frost Giants to my 5 year olds and they seem to be enjoying it ... can’t speak to the teen tho"

I just listened to that one, too, and I also liked it a lot. Great fun.

There's no better test of good prose than reading it aloud. I still "hear" Charlotte's Web in my mother's voice from her reading it aloud to us. She'd been a speech teacher and was a wonderful reader-aloud, doing all the character voices. Later on I enjoyed doing the same with my own kids. I particularly remember having fun reading the Pooh books to them (the A.A. Milne originals, of course ... the Disneyfied versions were, to us, "faux Pooh").

Wow you guys are great!!! Thank you sooo much!!! Wrote down all suggestions!!!

For scifi
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet might be old, but it was a hit around here. Also popular with my eldest (but she read them herself--she was an early reader) was the Mrs. Pickerell Goes to Mars, which is another oldie.

The Little House in the Big Woods series! I have read ALL of it aloud, including the one where Laura and Almanzo move states to one daughter. I read all but that book TWICE to my middle daughter. My son lasted through Farmer Boy, but by the next book he hit a common stage for boys where they are not interested in girl protagonists.

I read to my children separately at bedtime because my eldest has Asperger's Syndrome and is very bright, so had different interests. As for my middle daughter, she loved the Little House books at five, but as soon as we were finished she wanted me to read them all over again! I waited a year and then agreed. She loved them both times.

Redwall is great--we discovered that when my son was the right age, and he loved it, but then tired of it because each book has a different main character.

The Borrowers is delightful.

I read both Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little to my kids, but they preferred the former.

As for The Chronicles of Narnia, it's a classic but we ended up waiting until my kids could read it for themselves because I loved discovering them that was as a kid.

I LOVED it when my dad read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass as well as The Wizard of Oz when I was about 5. I didn't end up reading those to my kids because by the time we got them, the girls just read them on their own.

Wow, 5, 8 and 14? That's quite the spread.

My girls enjoyed the Oz and Narnia books more than Peter Pan or the Lewis Carroll stuff. Roald Dahl is always a good bet. Fortunately, The Milk by Neil Gaiman was a huge hit.

Karin wrote: "The Little House in the Big Woods series!"

Those are great family reading books. Dramatic, not too scary, and educational about life in the late 1800s. We read those books to our son and daughter multiple times and at multiple ages.

I love the Little House books, but there are things you'll want to discuss in there. For example the attitude toward the Indians, who were being displaced to make room for the homesteaders.

Cheryl wrote: "I love the Little House books, but there are things you'll want to discuss in there. For example the attitude toward the Indians, who were being displaced to make room for the homesteaders."

Good point. A lot of older books are opportunities for "people used to think and act this way" educational moments.

Just about all my favorites were mentioned. I would only add that Philip Pullman has other good books in addition to the Dark Materials (Golden Compass) trilogy, and some that are much more kid friendly. He writes for a broad range of age younger ages compared to the other authors (except Ian Fleming who wrote the one children’s book, and the rest were ultra-adult themed).

Stardust and a lot of Neil Gaiman's books would work

Bruce wrote: "Just about all my favorites were mentioned. I would only add that Philip Pullman has other good books in addition to the Dark Materials (Golden Compass) trilogy, and some that are much more kid fri..."

I don't think that The Golden Compass is not kid friendly- I just think it is a *little* too old for a five year old. I just remember (view spoiler)[the one part where Lyra is taken to that facility and separated from Pan(?) and it being scary for me at 8 or 9, adults performing experimental surgeries on kids. (hide spoiler)]

My daughter just turned 6 and in truth it might have gone over her head because it's fantasy, but if it didn't I'd hate to think I gave her nightmares or anything. They really are great books and I don't want to discourage anyone from reading them. I just wanted to make aware.

it's really going to depend on the 5 year old. I was reading and understanding adult books at 9 yo, so Pullman would have worked for me at 5. And a friend had a 7 year old who read and understood more about paleontology than most adults do. Poor kid had his science project rejected because the teacher said it was obvious that his father had done it and written the text (not true).

My sister, on the other hand, had difficulties with movies and I never got to see all of Gay Purree (sp?) because she started screaming because something bad was going to happen. We didn't have TV (lived in Germany at the time), so she wasn't used to what she was seeing not being real.

Cheryl wrote: "I love the Little House books, but there are things you'll want to discuss in there. For example the attitude toward the Indians, who were being displaced to make room for the homesteaders."

This depends on how old they are when you are reading it and if they are going to feel so badly for the first nations people that they won't be able to sleep at night. I didn't explain this to my middle daughter daughter when she was 5, but did when when she was 7 or 8. My son was even older when I told him (but this is one of the things about him that makes him excel in music--sensitivity).

Also, it had to be after my brother's wedding so they wouldn't be too sensitive around his first nations groomsman (one of his oldest friends)--I wanted them to get to know him prior and we live far away from my home town where A lives with his family (my brother's friend).