15 Chapter Books My 7 Year Old Loved

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about books here in our homeschool. I thought I would spend some time highlighting the books my 7-year old has read and loved this fall. This past summer I bought a huge selection of chapter books that were reasonably short (roughly 100 pages or less).

Last year she read through 35 of the Magic Tree House books. (affiliate link).  Just like my son, she read book after book systematically. (My middle daughter, on the other hand, read one and that was plenty for her!)

My daughter especially loved Vacation Under the Volcano.

She also read all of the books by Esther Averille that we could get our hands on: Jenny and the Cat Club: A Collection of Favorite Stories about Jenny Linsky,  The School for Cats,    Jenny’s Moonlight Adventure,  The Hotel Cat, and Jenny Goes to Sea. (affiliate links) Our library did not have these, but ED loved them SO much that we wound up buying them all. 🙂 She still re-reads these (grabbing them to read in the car or at the doctor’s office.)

When her books started coming in at the end of the summer, she couldn’t wait. We wound up reading The Fairy Rebel (affiliate link) aloud together.  ED loved it (and I enjoyed the story line too).  Here is Amazon’s description: The Fairy Queen strictly forbids fairies from using their magic power on humans. But after Tiki accidentally meets Jan, a woman who is desperate for a baby daughter, she finds it impossible to resist fulfilling her wish. Now up against the dark and vicious power of evil, this fairy rebel must face the Queen’s fury with frightening and possibly fatal results.

Once the school year started, I let ED choose from her new big stack of books.  She chose Mercy Watson to the Rescue.  She absolutely *loved* it. I didn’t realize it was a series when I bought it this summer, but she *begged* me to buy the other books.  Looking around, it was cheaper to buy the boxed set than to buy the other books separately (even though we had the first book). Mercy Watson Boxed Set: Adventures of a Porcine Wonder  We gave the other copy to her best friend (who loved it too!!!!) and she quickly read the other books (devoured them!).  We highly recommend this series!  This series is definitely for younger kids though. My 10 year old read them and said they were good, but much too young for her. 😉

Next, ED jumped into two books by Carolyn Haywood.  I read these aloud to LD and DD (when they were 3 and 5) years ago and they loved them.  I thought ED would enjoy reading them on her own.  She definitely did!! These are both sweet books with plain childhood fun adventures. She read both  Here’s a Penny and the next book, Penny and Peter. (affiliate links) These books are great as a read aloud for younger kids (as I did with my other two kids) or as a chapter book for kids 6 or 7 who are reading on their own. 

I bought a huge lot of Roald Dahl books on ebay.  We have about a dozen of them.  The two the girls really loved were The Twits and The Witches. (affiliate links) When I asked the girls which one they would recommend, they both went back and forth. They leaned towards The Witches, (affiliate link) though they said it was hard to say because they liked them both. 🙂

Another book Frindle is so funny! All three of the kids read this.  Here’s Amazon’s description: Is Nick Allen a troublemaker? He really just likes to liven things up at school — and he’s always had plenty of great ideas. When Nick learns some interesting information about how words are created, suddenly he’s got the inspiration for his best plan ever…the frindle. Who says a pen has to be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle? 

Another book that all three of the kids read this semester (to go along with our Middle Ages unit) was a “Choose your own adventure” type of book called: The Middle Ages: An Interactive History Adventure. (affiliate link) It was a huge hit in our house!! In it you can choose to “fight battles as a knight in the 1100s,” “Explore live in a royal castle in the 1200s,” or “experience the terror of the Black Plague in the 1300s.” It is geared towards younger readers, but my 12 year old read through it as well. My daughter loves animals and loved The Story of Diva and Flea. (affiliate link) This is another good chapter book for young readers because it has really pretty illustrations, the chapters are fairly short, and the story line is wonderful!

The last book I’m going to mention is The Cat Who Went to Heaven. (affiliate link) Both of my girls really liked this book a lot. Here’s the description from Amazon: According to legend, the proud and haughty cat was denied the Buddha’s blessing for refusing to accept his teachings and pay him homage. So when the artist, moved by compassion for his pet, includes the cat in his painting, the priest rejects the work and decrees that it must be destroyed. It seems the artist’s life is ruined as well — until he is rewarded for his act of love by a Buddhist miracle. 

We have  a number of other chapter books in ED’s pile that she hasn’t gotten to yet. I’ll save those for another time (if she likes them).

One last thing before I bring this to a close, ED also really loves Nick Bruel’s Bad Kitty’s  books. (affiliate link) We have quite a number of those because DD asked for them for her birthday a couple of years ago.  ED really got into them about a month ago and has finished all but two of those (we’re waiting to get them from the library).  They aren’t necessarily books that I’d consider school books, but since she and DD love these, I thought I’d give them a mention too.

ED also really loves reading children’s books.  You might enjoy this post: 15 Children’s Books Your 4-7 Year Old Shouldn’t Miss.  She still loves Ruby the Copycat,  Chocolatina,  The Chimpanzees of Happytown, Cinder Edna and A Bad Case of Stripes.

By the way, we also read a lot of books aloud together.  At the moment our family is reading through the Wrinkle in Time books.  The kids *beg* me to read more at lunch time!  The first book was slow for them at the beginning, but once we got into it we’ve been racing through them!! I bought an Instructional Guides for Literature: A Wrinkle in Time to go with the first book and we really got a lot out of the suggestions and writing ideas in that. We had some fabulous discussions about the book and theme.  I’ll probably buy another instructional guide at some point in the future; it was really helpful.   Now we’re just racing through the series and enjoying every moment! 

And, ED has also been caught up in the Harry Potter series as well. She’s on book 4.

That was about it for this semester (as much as I can recall!) Do you have any good book suggestions for a pet-loving 7 year old?  I’d love to hear what your kids’ favorites are at the moment!!  ~Liesl

Disclosure:  Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.

You might be interested in these related posts:

• 10 Books (and Series) My Kids Love (Ages 9, 11)
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• 15 Children’s Books Your 4-7 Year Old Shouldn’t Miss
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• 10 Books My 4 and 6 Year Old Love
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