Great Books to read around 11+

Parents are always asking me for book recommendations to expand their childrens vocabulary and creativity around 11+ assessment period. See my top recommendations, by theme, below...

Action, Thrillers & Adventure

Cornelia Funke: The Thief Lord Two orphaned children are on the run in Venice. They are befriended by a gang of street children and their leader, the Thief Lord. Suddenly things get serious when a detective starts following them, and there is a threat to their freedom.

Lian Hearn Across the Nightingale Floor Set in Japan, Takeo is training to be an assassin and is set an almost impossible task: to cross the Nightingale Floor and enter the city of Inuyama and stop the murderous warlord Iida Saduma.

Mystery & Crime

Malorie Blackman: Dead Gorgeous Nova is fed up. Her parents are busy running the hotel and her sister is too cool to hang out with her. Liam is fed up too, until he meets Nova. The pair strike up a friendship – the only problem is Liam is dead and Nova is the only one who can see him. A darkly funny mystery.

Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express

The ultimate crime novel! In the middle of the night, a snowdrift stops the Orient Express train on its tracks. In the morning, the body of an American tycoon is discovered, stabbed a dozen times in his locked compartment. Hercule Poirot knows the killer is still on the train and must stop them before another murder takes place!

Fantasy

Eoin Colfer: The Supernaturalist
Set in the Third Millennium, Cosmo Hill is a fourteen year old orphan, living in The Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys. Cosmo escapes on a transport ship to an unknown city, but the guards of the orphanage are chasing him. He teams up with a group of similarly minded children, and sets off to join their mission.

Joe Craig: Jimmy Coates:
Killer Jimmy Coates is amazed to discover that he has extraordinary powers that include being able to fly. But a group of strangers are also interested in his powers. Why are they after him? Are his parents hiding something from him? Where have his powers come from?

an image to represent the 'horror and su

Horror & Supernatural

Joseph Delaney: The Spook’s Apprentice
First in the series following a by who is training to be an exorcist. Thomas Ward is the seventh son of a seventh son, and therefore must learn the dark art of exorcising ghosts, witches and demons. But when an exorcism goes wrong, the horror really begins.

Neil Gaiman: Coraline
One day Coraline is exploring her new house and discovers a hidden door. At first there is nothing behind it except a brick wall, but the next time she checks she finds a strange and twisted parallel world where everything is the same, yet weirdly different.

Humour

Frank Cottrell Boyce: Millions Damian finds a bag of money that has seemingly fallen out of the sky. The country is about to change from the pound to the Euro, so Damian must find a way to spend the money quickly without getting caught. But Damian is a good boy who has to choose between his money and his conscience.

Tony Hawks: Around Ireland with a Fridge The true account of how a drunken bet turns into a journey of a lifetime. This is the tale of how Tony had to hitchhitch around the circumference of Ireland with a fridge. Proof that the truth is stranger than fiction!

Science Fiction

Carl Orson Scott: Ender’s Game Ender Wiggin is Battle School’s most promising pupil. And he needs to pull out all the stops in order to stop the alien horde that is heading straight to Earth. Can he be the one to save the human race from annihilation?

Alison Allen-Gray: Unique Dominic discovers that he had an older brother who died before he was born. He then discovers that his father had his brother cloned, and Dominic himself is the result. What other secrets is his father hiding from him?

Action, Thrillers & Adventure, continued

Eva Ibbotson: Journey to the River Sea
Maia is travelling with her governess Miss Minton up the Amazon, meeting intriguing characters along the way. Highly descriptive, it feels like you are there yourself.

Anthony Horowitz: Stormbreaker
After the death of his uncle, Alex Rider reluctantly becomes a spy for his late uncle’s firm. Follow his adventures beginning in ‘Stormbreaker’ up to the latest instalment, ‘Crocodile Tears’.

Robert Muchamore: CHERUB series
‘The Recruit’ is the first instalment of the CHERUB series. James is enrolling in the secret CHERUB organisation, training children to become spies. The first book follows James as he starts his training and first mission, and gets to grips with what it means to work in the dark world of spies.

Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials
Epic trilogy following Lyra and her daemon as they search for a kidnapped friend and get caught up in saving children from an evil organisation. Chris Ryan Survival Five children are stranded on a desert island. With komodo dragons, man-eating sharks and pirates out for their blood, can they pull together as a team and fight for survival? First in a series.

Action Thrillers & Adventure

Mystery & Crime, continued

Neil Gaiman: The Graveyard Book
A group of ghosts adopts a boy, with the strange and creepy undead Silas appointed his guardian. The boy (named Nobody) has an unconventional upbringing, learning the ways of ghosts, ghouls and witches. But someone wants Nobody dead, and it’s up to his strange family to protect him.

Sam Hutton: Deep End
Another kids-as-secret agents series, this time working for the Police Investigation Command. Maddy sees her parents gunned down by some unknown assailants, and vows revenge by signing up for the fight. She meets two other children along the way, and so begins the fun.

Philip Pullman: The Ruby in the Smoke
After her beloved father dies, Sally Lockhart run away. However, she runs right into a mystery. A letter arrives, and Sally decides to get to the heart of her father’s death. A brilliant Victorian mystery, the first of four Sally Lockhart mysteries.

Siobhan Dowd: The London Eye Mystery
Another book about living with autism. When Ted and Kat’s cousin Salim disappears on the London Eye, they decide to find out what happened. Unfortunately they have wildly differing theories. They must work together to track down Salim, and it is down to Ted and his unique mind to unravel the clues.

Fantasy, continued

Helen Dunmore: Ingo
Conor and Sapphire have always been drawn to water and the tale of a Mer creature that their father used to tell them. One summer, the call of the water is stronger than ever, and Conor and Sapphire meet Faro, a mer-man who takes them to the underwater world of Ingo. Ingo and the blood of the mer-folk runs closer to Sapphire than she could have ever imagined.

Charlie Fletcher: Stone Heart
When George accidently smashes an old dragon’s head outside the Natural History Museum, he opens up a dangerous power. This ancient beast hunts George down, but this is only the beginning, the power has unleashed all sorts of deadly creatures.

Cornelia Funke: Inkheart
Mo’s father has the ability to bring to life the stories and characters in any book. A wonderful gift, until one such character escapes from the pages and will do anything never to return.

Mary Hoffman: City of Masks
Set in our world and the parallel world of Talia, Lucien in gravely ill. He is given a notebook to record his thoughts and feelings, and discovers that the book can transport him to Talia, a world which holds a whole new set of problems.

Horror & Supernatural, continued

Ally Kennen: Beast
In a secret reservoir, a boy feeds and looks after a strange and monstrous creature. First it was small and harmless, but six years have passed and it has outgrown its cage. Stephan has lots of secrets, but the Beast is by far the biggest. He has to decide whether this is one secret worth keeping.

Justin Richards: The Parliament of Blood
Not for the fainthearted! There are many stories surrounding the undead, some are works of fiction, but others are based on truth. In the year 1886, Sir William, Eddie, George and Liz must decide what is real and what isn’t if they want to live.

Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Everyone has heard of Frankenstein, but have you read the book? Dr Frankenstein is determined to make a human from scratch. He collects body parts and stitches them together in his lab. One night, with a bolt of lightning, the monster is brought to life. But he is not the companion he was meant to be. So begins the terrifying and touching journey of Frankenstein and his monster.

Bram Stoker: Dracula
The original vampire story. A young lawyer, Jonathan Harker, is sent to Eastern Europe to visit Count Dracula in order to oversee a purchase of a grand house in London. But Jonathan becomes a prisoner, and the Count makes his way to England to start his reign of terror. Classic horror.

Humour, continued

P. G. Wodehouse: Carry on, Jeeves!
Classic comedy. Bertie Wooster is a rich, foolhardy man living in London in the 1930s. Enter Jeeves, Bertie’s new butler and all-round saviour, there to help Bertie and his equally useless friends out of all sorts of sticky situations. Excellent fun.

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
One Thursday the Earth is demolished to make way for a new space bypass. Arthur Dent is not happy to have his house destroyed, and, in just his pyjamas, he ends up aboard a space ship zipping his way around the universe with some new friends, including Marvin the paranoid android. Intergalactic fun.

Terence Blacker: Boy2Girl
Sam is an American boy who, after his mother dies, moves to England to live with his cousin Matthew. But Sam is trouble and Matt doesn’t like it. So he and his friends set Sam an initiation challenge; to pretend to be a girl for the first week of school. But things soon get out of hand.

Science Fiction, continued

Isaac Asimov: Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?
Fantastic Sci-Fi that formed the basis of the cult film classic ‘Blade Runner’. World War Terminus has finished, and has left the Earth desolate and ruined. Rick Deckard is the bounty hunter searching for renegade replicants, and harbouring a desire to keep a live animal, something the Earth no longer holds. He has a chance to make his dream come true, but things start getting out of hand.

Arthur C. Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey
An ancient artefact is found buried on the moon, and the discovery has released a powerful signal aimed at the planet Saturn. The manned spacecraft Discovery is send to find out what is going on. It is a risky mission, but under the control of the ship’s self-aware computer system, HAL, things should be OK. But then HAL starts becoming too independent, putting the lives of the crew and the mission in jeopardy.

Alan Gibbons: Shadow of the Minotaur
Phoenix hates his life, school, and is seriously embarrassed by his computer geek dad. One day, Phoenix logs on to ‘the Legendeer’, a game his father is working on, he gets to be a hero and it’s so realistic it feels as though he is really part of the game…