16
2012
News 2011SpringSummerAutumn
News 2009
News 2010
Community Music Centre Open Mornings Vacancies
Spring

Books to share with your daughter

Parents are keener than ever to encourage their daughters to read, according to visitor statistics from MyDaughter.co.uk, the website dedicated to providing information, expert opinion and useful advice on all aspects of raising and educating girls.

Tips For Books To Share With Your Daughter is by far the most popular page on the MyDaughter.co.uk site which receives between ten and twelve thousand visitors a month and inspired the recently published book, Your Daughter, A guide for raising girls.

The page – which attracted 608 unique visitors in January alone - contains suggested reading lists for different age groups. It features books by contemporary writers such as Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine, Neil Gaiman and Michael Morpurgo alongside old favourites from Ursula Le Guin, Judith Kerr, Gerald Durrell, Harper Lee and others.

 “This page is consistently at the top of our viewing figures, month in month out,” said MyDaughter.co.uk web manager Imogen Vanderpump. “There’s clearly a great appetite for reading and encouraging reading out there. Visitors aren’t just browsing, all our research shows they go on to purchase our recommendations.”

Other reading related articles on the site cover topics such as how to go about reading with your child, the pros and cons of allowing younger girls to read teen magazines, tips for reluctant readers, the popularity of ‘vampire’ books, and what place the electronic book has to play in our children’s future education – a fascinating issue as the country as a whole considers the implication of library closures.

The tips and book recommendations on MyDaughter.co.uk are provided by experts in girls’ education and reading tastes.

The recommended books are:

JUNIOR & PRE-TEEN

How to Train Your Dragon (Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third series), Cressida Cowell – a source of literary hilarity for all the family.
Percy Jackson series, Rick Riordan – great introduction to myths and legends in modern setting
Skulduggery Pleasant series, Derek Landy – tales of a literally-skeletal detective
Mortal Engines series, Philip Reeve – adventure & imaginative science fiction series (Mortal Engines, Predator’s Gold, Infernal Devices & A Darkling Plain.)
Artemis Fowl series, Eoin Colfer
Wolf Brother (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series), Michelle Paver
Harry Potter series, J K Rowling
Journey to the river sea, Eva Ibbotson
Step by Wicked Step, Anne Fine
Love Aubrey, Suzanne LaFleur
Knife, R J Anderson (and the sequel Rebel)
The Thirteen Treasures, Michelle Harrison (and sequel The Thirteen Curses)
Inkheart (Inkheart trilogy), Cornelia Funke
Skellig, David Almond (and the prequel My name is Mina)
Holes , Louis Sachar
The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
War Horse, Michael Morpurgo
The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, John Boyne – a book that works on different levels for children, teens and adults

EARLY TEENS

Twilight series, Stephanie Meyer
The Hunger Games Trilogy, Suzanne Collins – fast paced, gripping science fiction saga
Noughts and Crosses trilogy, Malorie Blackman
At the Sign of the Sugared Plum, Mary Hooper
Pirates!, Celia Rees -swashbuckling historical novel
My Swordhand is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick – tense, edge-of-seat gothic horror
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon
Finding Violet Park, Jenny Valentine (also The Ant Colony and Broken Soup)

OLDER TEENS

The Chaos Walking trilogy (The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men), Patrick Ness
A Gathering Light, Jennifer Donnelly
How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff
Postcards from No Man’s Land, Aidan Chambers
Numbers, Rachel Ward
Lucas, Kevin Brooks
Looking for JJ, Anne Cassidy
Rowan the Strange, Julie Hearn
What I Saw and How I Lied, Judy Blundell
Auslander, Paul Dowswell

MODERN CLASSICS

My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell
The Earthsea Quartet, Ursula Le Guin
The Railway Children, E. Nesbit
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
What Katy did series, Susan Coolidge
Little Women series, Louisa M Alcott
Anne of Green Gables, L Montgomery
The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, Penelope Lively
The Indian in the Cupboard series, Lynne Reid Banks
Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit, Judith Kerr
The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank
Over Sea, Under Stone, Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising sequence)
To Kill a Mocking Bird, Harper Lee