GIFT BOOKS FOR TWEENS

Here are some of my favourite reads from 2019 suited to readers in the 9 - 12 year age range, and that would make g r e a t   C h r i s t m a s   g i f t s.
They have all been published since 2018 and are stories that have stayed with me as being something special. They were enlightening and uplifting!  Celebrating kids and life, friendship and growing up. Not shirking difficult issues, but (and here's the rub) leaving the reader with a profound sense of joy*.

I loved them, and I'm hoping they might have your reading tween jumping for joy - and perhaps they'll even mildly impress your moody screen obsessed tween too... Here's hoping (it's the season of hope after all!)


Listed in the Honourees of the CBCA Awards for 2019 (it should have won!) - this book well deserves the accolades it has received. It totally reminded me of some of the seminal works by authors such as Cynthia Voigt from the early 1980s. Set in America around the time when encyclopaedias were big business, this will be an education in itself for today's reader. A brother and sister live in an apartment and their life journey is not an easy one. Lenny, a small but tough world-wise girl has a younger brother Davey, who has a condition that means he can't stop growing. Feel like crying yet? This story draws you in and grabs your heart.... You have been warned.  
Set in the UK the pressing issue of refugees is something that kids of all ages and nationalities are aware of and seek to understand. Wonderfully told from the perspective of a perceptive group of nine-year-olds, we are given a range of insights into who a refugee is (people just like us!) and a glimpse of some of the challenges they have lived though and must overcome. A range of attitudes to refugees and their plight are described with insight and empathy and humour. Highly recommended.
Ever since I read the Voyage of the Dawn Treader at age 7, the idea of falling into a bookish world has enthralled me. Here it is and it's fantastic!! I just loved the undertones of a Harry Potterish world based around book characters that James has built here. Book 2 has recently come out and is on my huge must-read pile. Great characters and a story line that promises to get better and more exciting... Can't wait!
Who reads verse novels? I'll admit I was sceptical - and I work in a school library - so you'd think I'd have been more open minded! Thankfully, I gave it a go and was not disappointed. Pip Harry has woven the stories of three Australian kids in to a story that is impossible to put down! You'll laugh and cry and love the lyrical flow of the text, which is an added bonus. I've been recommending it to everyone - strong or weak readers can't go wrong with this wonderful tale that perfectly captures the lives of kids like them....
A mix between Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie - this book is set in Maine in 1941 when a girl is sent to live with her unknown Grandmother in a Home for Orphans. Gusta (short for Augusta - so wishing I'd used that name for my girls now) is grieving over her lost parents and struggling to fit into a new town where her German name causes suspicion. She plays the french horn (another lost opportunity for my girls) and the descriptions of her feelings for the instrument and its music are sublime. An array of fascinating characters and beautiful dialogue makes this a captivating read. Buy it in hardcover - it's a keeper.
Living forever is often held up as being ideal. Here we meet someone who has been alive since viking times, and it's not all that it's cracked up to be. This fascinating premise is matched by a truly wonderful glimpse of what it would be like to have lived practically forever and the loneliness of living and living and living.... fantastic characters and a story that is a true page turner. Will appeal to all and keep you thinking way after it's over.





* Books that cause Joyful feelings in the tweenie age group should not be underestimated. It can be a time when pre-teen moodiness is starting to emerge, and life-affirming positive stories are a great antidote to natural down times. I find many YA books deeply depressing - dealing with life's problems and issues with little sense often that there is any light at the end of the tunnel.
So these books are not that. They'll hopefully provide your tween with favourites they can go back to again and again for years to come. :-)

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