Some Good Reading for Kids 8 - 12

The newest book -- Book Five -- in The 39 Clues series by Scholastic was just released last week. You've read about this series here before. Rick Riordan, the author of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series -- crafted the story arc and wrote the first book, The Maze of Bones. The other nine books in the ten-book series are being written by well-known children's book authors. Book Five: The Black Circle, is by Patrick Carman, who has written several successful books and series for young readers AND has the good sense to live in Walla Walla (and he grew up in Oregon)!

The series features fourteen-year-old Amy Cahill and her younger brother, Dan, as they travel the world in search of clues -- while evading some rather sinister distant family members who are doing the same, all in a race for the big prize. Book Two: One False Note, was written by Gordon Korman; Book Three: The Sword Thief, by Peter Lerangis; and Book Four: Beyond the Grave, by Jude Watson. Book Six, also by Jude Watson, will be published on November 3rd. The final book, written by Margaret Peterson Haddix, will hit the streets on September 1, 2010. The series also involves game cards and an online component, as well as the opportunity to win prizes. But in my opinion the books totally stand on their own just fine.

As long as we're talking about hot series for readers in the 8-10 age group, here's a little more news for you. The newest book in the wildly popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Dog Days, will be published October 12th. This is the fourth book in the series by Jeff Kinney, plus there is a do-it-yourself journal with wimpy kid cartoons.

And in the local-writer-does-good department, the second book in Dale Basye's Heck series, Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck, has just been published in hardcover. The first book, Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go, is now available in paperback. And yes, they are as funny as the titles imply.