[Vengeance]

I do remember eddings belgarion with a certain fondness. Of course if you are going to go down that path then feist's magician books or dragon lance (perhaps to young for that).

[Vengeance]

He doesn't want her mind to become mush.

[amphibian]

Thanks to you all. I'll keep noting down the contributions and she'll hopefully pick out what she likes or doesn't like (first few will probably be chosen on how awesome the cover art is to her sensibilities).

[Grimjust Bearegular]

I'd suggest

The Peculiar
Good Omens
Maurice and his Educated Rodents
His Dark Materials
The Dark is Rising
Elidor
Bridge to Terabithia
Ender's Game
Alice in Wonderland



Trust me, I do this for a living

[Tiste Simeon]

I bet she'd like the Hunger Games trilogy -strong female protagonist, lots of action, bit for romance... It has quite a wide appeal.

[Grimjust Bearegular]

Note sure I would recommend those to a 12 year old, they're quite "grown-up".

[Tarthenal Theloman Toblakai]

my 13 year old bro is read ASOIAF, now I wouldn't suggest this to a young lady, but similar ilk is ofc The Hobbit and LOTR. They have no nudity or swearing (from memory on the swearing) and have nice bits of romance and none too harsh combat with little detail on gore such as ASOIAF. And awesome elves, dwarves, the odd dragon and what not should be a fun read for an imaginative 12 year old girl or boy.

[Dadding]

His Dark Materials is still my favorite (or maybe second favorite next to Malazan) series of all time. My parents read it to me when I was 6 or so. I've since reread it over half a dozen times.

The Edge Chronicles was another one of my favorites growing up. The artwork is stunning too!

This post has been edited by Dadding: 01 July 2014 - 03:38 PM

[Puck]

The Earthsea trilogy might be worth a try? Though book one barely has any female characters, book two has a young girl as the main protagonist, though it has to be said that Le Guin does her very best to teach the reader that conflicts can be solved without violence - a worthy idea but means that there's no awesome battles and stuff. Also, all three books are about young protagonists growing up.

There are more than three books, but after book three it changes theme and tone almost completely.

This post has been edited by Puck: 01 July 2014 - 08:14 PM

[Lady Bliss]

Definitely Feist, Eddings, and Le Guin at that age, and you could probably do Katherine Kerr and Mercedes Lackey as well. I was also a big fan of Anne Rice back then and with all of the vampire crushes I'm sure that would still go over well.

[amphibian]

I have read a big chunk of Anne Rice and rest assured that she will not be given those books.

She's 12 and just starting to read on her own, darn it.

[QuickTidal]

There's a few I've reccomended to my niece and a few I read myself...but for a great one with a strong protag (and gorgeous art) and a totally different world...

THE SEARCH FOR WOND-LA by Tony Diterlizzi

When a marauder destroys the underground sanctuary that Eva Nine was raised in by the robot Muthr, the twelve-year-year-old girl is forced to flee aboveground. Eva Nine is searching for anyone else like her, for she knows that other humans exist, because of an item she treasures—a scrap of cardboard on which is depicted a young girl, an adult, and a robot, with the strange word, “WondLa.” Tony DiTerlizzi honors traditional children’s literature in this totally original space age adventure: one that is as complex as an alien planet, but as simple as a child’s wish for a place to belong.

Then there are the two sequels THE HERO OF WOND-LA and THE BATTLE FOR WOND-LA

I've read the first book, and it was splendid and perfect for someone of age twelve.

[Tapper]

Bill Bryson's A really short history of nearly everything is apparently the children's adaptation of the 'A short history'. Might be worth it as a non-fiction book if she's interested in a bit of science.

Watership down?

[Kruppe's snacky cakes]

Haven't seen these mentioned yet:

The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer

The Time Travelers by Linda Buckley-Archer

Kiki Strike by Kirsten Miller

Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams

Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor

Bloody Jack by Louis A. Meyer

They're all fantastice YA reads in their own right, and all have girl protagonists or co-protagonists.

[QuickTidal]

 Kruppe, on 02 July 2014 - 03:16 PM, said:

The Time Travelers by Linda Buckley-Archer

Seconding this. Great trilogy, great characters and page-burning plot!

[Gothos]

When I was her age I've had The Witcher books behind me and moving on to Malazan. Give her Gardens of the Moon.

[King Lear]

 Tarthenal Theloman Toblakai, on 01 July 2014 - 11:21 AM, said:

my 13 year old bro is read ASOIAF, now I wouldn't suggest this to a young lady, but similar ilk is ofc The Hobbit and LOTR. They have no nudity or swearing (from memory on the swearing) and have nice bits of romance and none too harsh combat with little detail on gore such as ASOIAF. And awesome elves, dwarves, the odd dragon and what not should be a fun read for an imaginative 12 year old girl or boy.

Sweet baby jesus there are no words.




I don't know if her parents not being readers says anything about her reading level, but if even if she's not a strong reader, suggesting more challenging books is not necessarily a bad idea because it's surprising what sticks sometimes

I loved Lord of the Rings, Feist's books were great (also the Empire series with Janny Wurts), Anne McCaffrey;s Dragonriders of Pern might be exactly what you're looking for since the books aren't intimidating for someone who's not a big reader and the gender division isn't completely skewed like in LotR (my child brain read all elves and hobbits as lady-types because they were pretty/little and I wanted someone to relate to, Terry Pratchett is always awesome,

Also seconding (or thirding or whatever) Roald Dahl (some people found these scary, but she's probably old enough not to), Brian Jacques, C S Lewis, Lewis Carroll, DWJ (<3), Edding's is a good gateway drug, and Le Guin.

[amphibian]

It's been shown pretty conclusively that parents who read books on their own will instill into most of their kids a love for reading that kicks in early - often as soon as the kids can read. They'll sit down with the kids, read them books and eventually the kid takes over for herself/himself. This boosts grades, communication abilities and so on.

My cousin's family came from Nepal about seven years ago (when she was five) and the way most Nepali families operate is that reading books is for school or work only. Otherwise, it's the newspaper and talking with people, watching TV/movies or just passing time however they like. I've been to many dozens of Nepali homes (maybe over 150 at this point) and honestly, less than twenty had shelves of books read for pleasure. The library system over there isn't set up like most of the libraries people here know - kids don't go there to borrow books. They go there to study and the books don't leave the place because they'd get torn up, stolen etc.

My cousin's mother (also my cousin, but she's a grown-up, so... I dunno) and her husband have some education, but they're not pleasure readers and probably never will be. So it's taken up until now for my cousin to get to a point where she's actually seeking out books to read. I don't want to toss her in the deep end from the start because I really, really don't want her to think of reading as an arduous thing just yet. She has time to go deeper after she figures out which parts of the oceans she wants to wade into at the start.

[worry]

Did anyone mention the Oz books? I've only read the first one, but there's a ton of them so if it's a matter of getting used to reaching for a book during leisure times instead of automatically going for the tv remote, a series like that might be ideal.

I likewise haven't read any of these so I'm not up on their quality, but there's the Series of Unfortunate Events books. I guess point being, these series w/ several generally short books do help with the concept of looking forward to reading something, w/o the (possibly intimidating) heft of the later HP books.

[Puck]

Neil Gaiman also wrote some good YA books like Coraline or The Graveyard Book and whatnot. I'm not qualified to judge (was, like Gothos, reading The Witcher when I was 12) but I'd definitely recommend those to any potential 12-year-old cousin.