Best Books for 8 Year Olds

The Bad Guys

Aaron Blabey

A wolf, a snake, a piranha and a shark are tired of being the villains, so they set out to do good deeds. Nobody trusts them, and they are not very good at it yet. A long series.

Why read it: Big pictures and short chapters make it fast to read, and the jokes land even for kids who say they hate books. Under the jokes it asks whether people can change.

Fun fact: Before he wrote books, Aaron Blabey was an actor in Australia for about 15 years.

Captain Underpants

Dav Pilkey

George and Harold write comic books and play pranks. When they hypnotize their grumpy principal, he turns into a superhero in his underwear whenever someone snaps their fingers.

Why read it: It is pure silliness, which is what gets some kids to the end of their first long book. The Flip-O-Rama pages turn reading into a game.

Fun fact: Dav Pilkey invented Captain Underpants as a second grader, when his teacher kept sending him out to the hallway for talking. He sat out there and drew comics.

Flat Stanley

Jeff Brown

First published in 1964. A bulletin board falls on Stanley Lambchop in the night, and in the morning he is half an inch thick. He slides under doors, flies like a kite and gets mailed to California in an envelope.

Why read it: It is short, funny and full of ideas a kid can try in their head: what else could you do if you were flat?

Fun fact: The idea came at bedtime. Jeff Brown's son, stalling before sleep, asked what would happen if the big bulletin board on his wall fell on him. Brown said he would probably wake up flat.

The Wild Robot

Peter Brown

A robot named Roz washes up on a wild island with no people on it and has to learn to survive from the animals. The first of three books, made into an animated movie in 2024.

Why read it: It is a survival story told in short chapters, and Roz has to work out food, winter and friendship from nothing.

Fun fact: The book started as a small doodle of a robot sitting in a tree. Brown kept wondering what a robot would be doing in a forest, and the answer became his first novel.

Cam Jansen

David A. Adler

Cam has a photographic memory: she looks at something, says "Click," and can see it again later in her head. With her friend Eric she solves small mysteries.

Why read it: The mysteries are short enough to finish in one sitting, and the reader gets to try Cam's trick: look at a page, close your eyes, and see what you remember.

Fun fact: Adler based Cam on a kid from his own school days who people said had a photographic memory.

A to Z Mysteries

Ron Roy

Dink, Josh and Ruth Rose solve mysteries in their small town of Green Lawn. There are 26 books, one for each letter of the alphabet, so kids always know which one comes next.

Why read it: Kids get to collect a whole alphabet, and each mystery gives them enough clues to solve it before the friends do.

Fun fact: The first book came from a real book signing. Ron Roy arrived late, and a kid told him he had been worried Roy was kidnapped. That became the first mystery, The Absent Author.

Encyclopedia Brown

Donald J. Sobol

Leroy Brown is ten, reads everything, and runs a detective agency from his garage for 25 cents a day. Each chapter is one short case, and the solution is printed at the back of the book, so the reader gets to solve it first.

Why read it: Every chapter is a puzzle the reader can solve, and checking the answer at the back feels like winning.

Fun fact: About two dozen publishers turned the first book down before one said yes. It came out in 1963 and has been in print ever since.

The Boxcar Children

Gertrude Chandler Warner

Four orphaned brothers and sisters run away and make a home in an old railroad boxcar in the woods. They find dishes at the dump and cook their own meals. The first book is about how they live; the long series after it is mysteries.

Why read it: Kids love reading about children who take care of themselves, and the boxcar home makes them want to build their own.

Fun fact: Gertrude Chandler Warner grew up across the street from a railroad station. As a girl she watched the trains for hours and dreamed of living in a freight car.

Magic Tree House

Mary Pope Osborne

Jack and Annie find a tree house full of books in the woods near their home. When they point at a picture and wish to go there, the tree house takes them: to the dinosaurs, to ancient Egypt, to the Titanic.

Why read it: Each book is an adventure and a history lesson at once, and when a kid gets curious about a place there is usually a book that goes there.

Fun fact: The first book, Dinosaurs Before Dark, came out in 1992. The series has sold well over 100 million copies since.

My Father's Dragon

Ruth Stiles Gannett

A Newbery Honor book from 1949. A boy named Elmer Elevator sets off for Wild Island to rescue a baby dragon. He packs chewing gum, lollipops, rubber bands and other odd things, and each one gets him past a dangerous animal. Two more books follow.

Why read it: It reads like a fairy tale with a clever hero who wins with his head, and the short chapters make a good read-aloud.

Fun fact: Ruth Stiles Gannett wrote it a few years after college, between jobs. The pictures were drawn by her stepmother, who was also named Ruth.

The Princess in Black

Shannon Hale and Dean Hale, illustrated by LeUyen Pham

Princess Magnolia wears pink dresses and has a duchess over for hot chocolate and scones. When the monster alarm rings, she slips into a closet and comes out as the Princess in Black. Nobody knows it is her.

Why read it: It has a secret identity, monster fights and big pictures, and it is easy enough for a kid who has just started chapter books.

Fun fact: Shannon Hale's four-year-old daughter, Magnolia, told her that princesses don't wear black. Hale could not think of one who did, so she made one up.

Dragon Masters

Tracey West

Drake is a farm boy until the king's wizard picks him to become a Dragon Master and train his own dragon, a quiet Earth Dragon named Worm. Easy chapter books with a picture on every page.

Why read it: It gives kids dragons and a training school in a book they can finish on their own, and there is always another one in the series.

Fun fact: Tracey West has written hundreds of books for kids, including many Pokémon chapter books.

Dog Man

Dav Pilkey

A police officer and his dog are hurt on the job, and the doctors put the dog's head on the officer's body. Dog Man is a great cop who still chases squirrels. In the story, the books are drawn by George and Harold from Captain Underpants.

Why read it: It is a comic that kids read again and again, and under the jokes it is about being kind even when you were made bad.

Fun fact: Dav Pilkey has ADHD and dyslexia. He says they helped him write stories that are not boring.

Narwhal and Jelly

Ben Clanton

Narwhal is cheerful, loves waffles and believes in everything. Jelly is a jellyfish who is not so sure. Short comic stories about friendship, plus funny facts about real sea animals. The first book won an Eisner Award for early readers.

Why read it: The stories are short and kind and funny, and a new reader can get through a whole book alone.

Fun fact: A real narwhal's tusk is a tooth, and it can grow almost 10 feet long.

InvestiGators

John Patrick Green

Mango and Brash are two alligators who work as secret agents and travel to their missions through the sewer pipes. The jokes are mostly puns. The publisher lists the series for ages 7 to 10.

Why read it: It is packed with jokes and wordplay, and getting a pun is a small reading win every page.

Fun fact: John Patrick Green made his own comics when he was eleven. He wrote InvestiGators to feel that way about making comics again.

El Deafo

Cece Bell

A Newbery Honor book. A true story: Cece lost her hearing when she was four and went to school with a big hearing aid strapped to her chest. It let her hear her teacher anywhere in the building, even in the bathroom, and she starts to feel like a superhero. Everyone in it is drawn as a rabbit.

Why read it: It is a true story that shows what it feels like to be different at school, told with humor and drawn as a comic.

Fun fact: "El Deafo" was a name Cece Bell gave herself as a kid, so that if anyone called her that, she would be ready.

Zoey and Sassafras

Asia Citro

The author is a former science teacher. Zoey finds out that magical animals come to her backyard when they need help, and she uses real science experiments to figure out what is wrong. Sassafras is her cat. Each book has a problem, a guess, and an experiment that tests it.

Why read it: It mixes magic with real science, and kids see how a guess gets tested, the way scientists do it.

The Notebook of Doom

Troy Cummings

Alexander moves to a new town and finds an old notebook full of drawings of monsters. Then the monsters start showing up. He joins a secret monster patrol with two new friends. Easy chapter books with lots of pictures, and more than a dozen of them.

Why read it: It is spooky in a funny way, with monsters made of everyday things like balloons, and the books are short enough to read in a weekend.

Fun fact: Troy Cummings has drawn since he was little, and his drawings have ended up in newspapers, in hospital waiting rooms and on boxes of frozen fish sticks.

Bad Kitty

Nick Bruel

Kitty is a very bad kitty, especially when there is no food she likes in the house. In the chapter books she gets a puppy brother, goes to school and runs for president, and Uncle Murray explains the facts along the way.

Why read it: Kitty is grumpy, loud and very funny, and kids recognize their own big moods in her.

Fun fact: The very first Bad Kitty book was an alphabet picture book, with Kitty going from A to Z one bad deed at a time.

Charlotte's Web

E. B. White

Wilbur is a pig who is going to be killed in the winter. Charlotte, a gray spider in the barn, saves him by writing words in her web.

Why read it: It is funny for most of the book and sad near the end, and it shows a friend saving someone with nothing but words.

Fun fact: White found a real spider spinning an egg sac in his barn in Maine. He cut it out, carried it to New York in a candy box with holes in the lid, and weeks later hundreds of baby spiders hatched and spun webs all over his bedroom.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Roald Dahl

First published in 1964. Five golden tickets are hidden in chocolate bars, and the winners get to tour Willy Wonka's factory. Charlie Bucket is poor and finds the last one. The other four kids get what they deserve, one by one.

Why read it: The factory is one of the most fun places in any book, and kids enjoy seeing the rude kids get what they deserve.

Fun fact: When Roald Dahl was a schoolboy, a chocolate company sent new chocolate bars to his school for the boys to taste and judge. He dreamed of working in a secret room where new chocolate was invented.

The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Beverly Cleary

First published in 1965. Ralph is a young mouse who lives in an old hotel. A boy named Keith checks in with a toy motorcycle, and Ralph finds out he can ride it if he makes the right noise. Then he takes it out without asking.

Why read it: It is a small adventure with a big feeling: wanting to go fast, and learning what happens when you take something that is not yours.

Fun fact: Beverly Cleary got the idea from watching her son play with toy cars and motorcycles while he was sick in bed, and from a neighbor who showed her a mouse caught in a bucket.

Who Was...?

Various authors

A big series of short biographies by many writers: Who Was Albert Einstein?, Who Was Harriet Tubman?, Who Was Neil Armstrong? and hundreds more. Each one tells a real person's life in about a hundred pages, with drawings and fact boxes. Easy to spot by the cartoon heads on the covers.

Why read it: Real lives can be as exciting as made-up ones, and these are short enough that a kid can read about a hero this weekend.

I Survived

Lauren Tarshis

Each book follows a made-up kid through a real disaster: the sinking of the Titanic, the eruption at Pompeii, the San Francisco earthquake. The kid is invented, but the event and many of the details are real, and there are facts at the end.

Why read it: Each book is a page-turner, and kids come away knowing real history without feeling taught.

Fun fact: Lauren Tarshis was editing a classroom magazine and saw that kids grabbed stories about real disasters before anything else. That gave her the idea for the series.

Who Would Win?

Jerry Pallotta, illustrated by Rob Bolster

Each book puts two real animals side by side, like a lion and a tiger or a killer whale and a great white shark, and compares their size, teeth, speed and weapons. The last page says who wins.

Why read it: A kid reads to the last page to find out who wins, and picks up real animal facts on the way.

Fun fact: Jerry Pallotta was an insurance salesman when he wrote his first book, an ocean alphabet book, to help his own kids learn their ABCs.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Jeff Kinney

Greg Heffley is in middle school and writes about it in a journal (not a diary, he says) with cartoons on every page. He is not a hero. He is lazy, a bit selfish, and very funny about it.

Why read it: It is funny on every page, and the cartoons help kids who find a page full of words hard.

Fun fact: Before it was a book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid ran for free online, one entry a day, on the kids' website Funbrain.

The Last Kids on Earth

Max Brallier, illustrated by Douglas Holgate

After a monster apocalypse, Jack Sullivan lives in a treehouse with video games and junk food. He and his friends fight zombies and huge monsters. A Netflix show was made from it.

Why read it: It has monsters, friends and a treehouse full of junk food, and kids who like video games often like this too.

Fun fact: When Max Brallier was in middle school, he wrote movie reviews for kids in his hometown newspaper.

Big Nate

Lincoln Peirce

Nate Wright is in sixth grade and sure he is destined for greatness, mostly at drawing comics, playing games and getting detention. The series has comic-strip books and novels with comics mixed in.

Why read it: It is a comic and a story at once, and Nate's confidence and mistakes make kids laugh at the kind of trouble they know.

Fun fact: Big Nate began as a newspaper comic strip in 1991. Lincoln Peirce named Nate after a nickname he gave his older brother.

Hilo

Judd Winick

A boy falls out of the sky in a crater. He has no memory, wears silver underpants and is very excited about everything. D.J. and Gina help him figure out who he is, while robots try to destroy the world. Graphic novels, listed for ages 8 to 12.

Why read it: It is a fast, funny adventure about friends, and the comic panels pull kids through the pages.

Fun fact: Judd Winick also created a cartoon for Cartoon Network, The Life and Times of Juniper Lee.

Stick Dog

Tom Watson

Stick Dog is called that because he is drawn as a stick figure. He and his four friends keep trying to steal food, like hamburgers from a family picnic, and their plans go wrong in long, funny ways.

Why read it: It is silly from start to finish, and the stick-figure drawings make it look easy even when the book is long.

Fun fact: Tom Watson used to write speeches for the governor of Ohio.

Ivy + Bean

Annie Barrows, illustrated by Sophie Blackall

Ivy is quiet and reads books. Bean is loud and gets into trouble. Bean's mom keeps telling her to play with Ivy next door, so Bean decides Ivy must be boring, until Bean needs help and Ivy has a plan.

Why read it: It is a funny story about how a friendship starts, and the two girls are different enough that most kids see themselves in one of them.

Clementine

Sara Pennypacker, illustrated by Marla Frazee

Clementine is in third grade and keeps getting sent to the principal's office. She thinks she is paying attention, just to different things than her teacher wants. In the first book she cuts off her friend Margaret's hair.

Why read it: Clementine's mistakes come from a good heart, and kids who get in trouble for not paying attention will feel seen.

Dory Fantasmagory

Abby Hanlon

Dory is the youngest in her family, and her big brother and sister think she is a baby. So she plays with her imaginary friend and hides from Mrs. Gobble Gracker, a baby-stealing robber her brother made up to scare her.

Why read it: It shows a kid's imagination from the inside, and the drawings look like Dory made them herself.

Fun fact: Abby Hanlon was a first grade teacher. She had not drawn since she was a kid, and she taught herself to draw again so she could illustrate her own books.

Juana & Lucas

Juana Medina

The author grew up in Bogotá, Colombia, like her main character. Juana loves her dog Lucas, her city and drawing. She does not love learning English, until she finds a good reason to. Short chapters with Spanish words mixed in.

Why read it: It is a warm story about a girl in another country, with Spanish words mixed in that kids can pick up.

Ramona Quimby, Age 8

Beverly Cleary

A Newbery Honor book from 1982. Ramona starts third grade at a new school, rides the bus by herself, and has one terrible day with a raw egg. Her dad has gone back to school too, and money is tight at home.

Why read it: Ramona is eight, so she has the same worries an eight-year-old reader has, and Cleary makes them funny without making them small.

Fun fact: Cleary was a children's librarian first. Kids kept asking her for books about kids like them, and there were none, so she wrote them.