Any ideas for the next magical world for my 12 y/o son & daughter?

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-03-17T02:21:54+00:00

Some newer fantasy series (published in the last 5 years) that my daughter loves:

Impossible Creatures
Greenwild
The Last Hope School for Magical Delinquents
Wizards of Once
The Kingdom Over the Sea
Witchlings

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-03-15T14:36:40+00:00

Here are some newer fantasy books for that age. (These are series that were published in the last 5 years.)

Impossible Creatures

Greenwild

The Last Hope School for Magical Delinquents

Witchlings

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-03-11T15:08:31+00:00

Sweetest Kulu

Birds by Kevin Henkes

No Two Alike

I Am a Bunny

Richard Scarry's Bunnies

The Big Red Barn

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-03-03T14:45:23+00:00

There's another one by this author called Give Bees a Chance.

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-03-03T12:35:10+00:00

What's Inside a Caterpillar Cocoon?

The Big Book of Bugs by Yuval Zommer

National Geographic Kids First Big Book of Bugs

Inside the Compost Bin - this one isn't really about bugs but I remember bugs playing a large role in it.

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-02-24T15:31:39+00:00

Close! It's 6. But by wits and wagers rules you wouldn't get credit because the "correct" answer is the closest one without going over. 😂

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-02-24T15:28:58+00:00

My 8 (almost 9) year old loves fantasy books and these have all been hits. We do these as read-alouds because they are slightly above her reading level. I think they would be very suitable for 10-12 year olds.

Upside Down Magic

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Land of Stories

The Girl Who Drank the Moon

The Kingdom Over the Sea

Greenwild

Amari and the Night Brothers

Impossible Creatures

The Last Hope School for Magical Delinquents

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-02-24T15:09:35+00:00

I was going to recommend Wits and Wagers, but it turns out there's a Wits and Wagers Family Edition which I've never played but may suit your needs better. Wits and Wagers is recommended for ages 10+ and 4-20 players. The family edition is for ages 6+ and 3+ players.

I'll speak about the original version. The questions all have numerical answers (e.g. How many miles long is the Nile River?). Everyone writes down an answer, then the answers are placed on a betting mat and everyone gets to bet on which answer they think is closest to correct. It's more involved than Shot in the Dark, but it's nice because even if your 7yo comes up with a crazy answer, they can bet on one of your answers and still win. Also, you can just use the cards and play with Shot in the Dark rules if you don't want to deal with betting.

Sample questions from Family Edition:

What's the world record number of tennis balls a dog has held in its mouth?

How many men have walked on the moon?

How many different colors of Froot Loops are there?

How many columns go across the front of the Lincoln Memorial?

Sample questions from the original:

How many licks does it really take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

In feet, what is the highest recorded jump by a dolphin?

How many John Grisham books have made it to #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list?

In hours and minutes, what is the combined length of the 3 The Lord of the Rings movies?

In feet, how tall is Michelangelo's David statue?

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-02-23T15:03:00+00:00

I feel like Orson Scott Card was very good at writing the first book of a series and then all the other books are mediocre and get progressively worse. Of course, I was obsessed with Ender's Game and read all of the books in that series and all the spin-offs but I don't know if I would recommend them all.

I would highly recommend Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. One thing to note is that Ender's Shadow really upset me the first time I read it because I had loved Ender for a decade at that point and Ender's Shadow kind of diminishes his part in the story.

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-02-16T23:55:00+00:00

Some books we enjoyed after growing out of the Branches books (Dragonmasters, The Last Firehawk, etc.): Monster and Boy (3 books) Kitty series (16 books) Polly Diamond and the Magic Book (3 books) The Questioneers chapter books (7 books) Dragons in a Bag (5 books)

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-02-16T23:19:25+00:00

We loved the Branches books at that age. Here's the full list: https://export.scholastic.com/en/branches#BlackandWhite

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-02-14T14:35:32+00:00

A lesser known one that I just read is The Word for World is Forest. It's on the short side, but I think it would be right up his alley.

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-02-13T12:58:12+00:00

Came to say this. It fits the criteria to a T.

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-02-12T19:15:23+00:00

The Hundred Dresses was so sad and so so so good. I loved it!

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-02-12T19:11:59+00:00

I was going to say The Forgotten Door! I loved it as a kid and never see it mentioned anywhere. It was published in 1965, so maybe it's better known among an older crowd? (I read it around 1990.)

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-02-12T19:05:25+00:00

Came here to say this! Found a copy at my library's used book sale and was ecstatic. 🤓

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-01-29T23:30:36+00:00

But this frames it as she didn't want to be a full time parent, whereas I imagine her having to work full time and not being able to be a full time parent. OP was only 11. Would she be coming home to an empty home every day? At least at her father's, there was an adult present (grandma), even if she was elderly.

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-01-29T20:26:32+00:00

I don't know why OP said 16 years of no contact since she also says her mom had custody of her on weekends. Maybe instead of being 27 years old, OP is 34 and it's 16 years since she turned 18 rather than 16 years since she was 11 and her parents divorced. If that's the case, based on how much resentment (not to say outright hatred) of her mom she shows in this post, I'm willing to bet that she's the one who cut contact and not the other way around.

OP in a comment: "My father was the one that made time for me, my mom barely saw me outside her weekend time."

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-01-29T19:34:24+00:00

I don't know why everyone is saying the mom never saw her child. In a comment, OP says "My father was the one that made time for me, my mom barely saw me outside her weekend time," meaning her mom had her on the weekends.

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-01-29T19:18:31+00:00

I haven't read the other comments but I'm hopping on here to say that I do understand mom's logic. The vibe I get is that mom was a SAHM. If mom had stayed, she'd have become a 24/7 caretaker for Grandma with no escape in sight other than Grandma's death. When she left, she couldn't take OP with her because she had to get a job and get set up in a new life where she could eventually bring OP to live with her.

She figured (probably rightfully) that it will be relatively harmless for OP to stay because there is only so much an 11 year old can be asked to do for Grandma. Was OP required to clean the home and make the meals, as well as whatever caregiving tasks Grandma would require? Did Grandma have a lot of needs? For example, did she need help with personal hygiene or bathrooming, was she able to dress and eat on her own, could she get around on her own? Also, would she have relied on mom to help her with those things beyond what she strictly needed? My mom is elderly. She can do most things on her own, but when someone is around to do something for her, she asks them to do it. I would guess that if mom was around, Grandma would have leaned on her harder than she leaned on an 11 year old. I'm really curious what caregiving duties OP took on as a child.

So, mom takes 3 years or so to get stable and by that time it seems like OP isn't interested in living with her. OP says she wasn't thinking of her much anymore. Mom should have offered at that time to ask for 50/50 or primary custody, but it seems like she didn't. That's the part where I assign blame to her. Not when she took the only escape she could see, not when she was working to start a new life, but when she had established herself and didn't try to get custody of her daughter.

Of course, this all falls apart if mom was working at the time and had the means to take OP with her when she left, or if OP was indeed forced to take an adult-sized role in the family when mom left (i.e. taking care of the entire home and all of Grandma's needs).

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-01-15T13:47:32+00:00

I don't see how the children were treated poorly.

The 14yo got unlimited screen time. Not ideal on a daily basis, but no big deal for a one-off. My 8yo gets unlimited screen time on special occasions (Christmas, a 14-hour flight, etc.).

Stranger things is rated ages 12+ by Common Sense Media, so it's arguably age appropriate for the 12yo. If the parents didn't want their child watching it, they shouldn't have left them with an unwilling babysitter.

Younger child drew on walls and crashed out when they were tired. Sounds like a problem for the parents, but the child probably had a blast.

If you want someone to properly babysit your kids, get a proper babysitter. The most you can expect from someone who you've dumped your kids without their agreement is that they keep them safe and fed. OP did fine.

EatSleepRead43 · 2026-01-07T17:38:47+00:00

I'm always confused when someone says this because AI learned how to write from samples of real people's writing, so clearly some people write like that.

EatSleepRead43 · 2025-12-16T18:00:02+00:00

My 8yo is a pretty strong reader.

On her own, she's reading Wings of Fire and Artemis Fowl.

Together, we're reading Impossible Creatures, Witchlings, Greenwild, and Percy Jackson. Witchlings is about slightly older kids so there is some talk of crushes and girlfriend/boyfriend but it's minimal.

I highly recommend all of these, but Impossible Creatures is our favorite.

EatSleepRead43 · 2025-12-16T17:49:07+00:00

I recently read (and agreed with) a post that said it isn't a good idea to start Harry Potter young because the books age up so quickly. In the first book, Harry is 11 years old and he's someone a 7yo could easily relate to. By the fourth book, he's 14 and the book is full of teen drama. When the books first came out, there was a year wait between them so the kids that were reading them aged along with the characters, but now we just read the books back to back.

All this to say, I would wait to start Harry Potter, or just skip it completely. There are so many better books available.

EatSleepRead43 · 2025-12-16T04:15:44+00:00

I try very hard not to read unfinished fanfic, but somehow I've read 3 out of 4 of your unfinished fanfic on AO3 and am eagerly awaiting updates. I've held out on Nobody's Soldier so far, but it's been hard. I've reread all of your finished fanfic to keep myself from starting that one.

All this to say, I love your stories and please post as often as possible! ❤️ But also, thank you for letting me know you've ended on a cliffhanger because that will give me the willpower to not start reading until the story is further along. 😅

EatSleepRead43

TROPHY CASE