Books For 10 Year Old Girls

As the mother of an avid ten year old reader I am constantly searching for the very best books for her to read. The books that are listed below are those that I have bought or borrowed from my local library and which my daughter (and her friends) have enjoyed. As my daughter is part of an active children's book club I have also used some of their picks below. 

I would like this page to be one that is constantly evolving through suggestions from my readers, so if you know of any books that are suitable for ten year old girls please let me know. 

My own daughter is a fairly accomplished reader, however she likes to read books that would suit a whole range of abilities. Therefore you can pick and choose from the books listed and pick those that you think would be most suitable for your own ten year old.

One thing to note. Although my daughter is quite an advanced reader I like the books that she reads to reflect her actual age rather than her reading age. By this I mean that I try and keep the subject matter at a level which is appropriate for a ten year old. If you see anything here that you think doesn't meet those criteria please let me know! ...

By the age of ten most children have been introduced to the Harry Potter series, but I found that it wasn't until this age that my daughter could really enjoy the last few books. When asked what she loves about the Harry Potter series my daughter simply answered "everything."

The perfect combination of boarding school, wizards, spells and a slow unravelling of tiny details, my daughter is Hogwarts obsessed. If your daughter isn't yet, give these a try. 

"Are you a gifted child looking for Special Opportunities?" runs the newspaper advert for entry to The Mysterious Benedict Society. 

This series is about four children who win a challenge to be enrolled in a mysterious society set up by the enigmatic Mr Benedict. They are then set a series of challenges and puzzles to help save the world from being taken over by Mr Benedict's evil twin. My daughter was utterly captivated by this book and spent hours attempting to solve the challenges and furiously trying to unravel secrets in morse code. Each book has a new and more dangerous mystery for them to solve, and the reader becomes involved in solving the clues and riddles to help unravel the mystery. My daughter read this whole series back to back and regularly asks me whether any more have been published. 

Full of intrigue and mysteries to solve, these books nonetheless captured the imagination of my very girly ten year old.  I've yet to meet a ten year old that doesn't love them. 

This book is described as suitable for ages 10 years and up and I would suggest that if your 10 year old is not yet a strong reader this might be slightly on the difficult side. Having said that this book is amazing. So much so that I snuck it out of my daughter's bedroom at night and read it myself whilst she was sleeping. If you think your child isn't yet ready to read it themselves this book might just be a great one for you to read to them. 

Somewhere in the nether land between children's and adult fiction this is the compelling story of a town called Freedomtown in Texas in the 1920s. Conceived from a similar true story it tells the story of how white people decided to move an all black town from the center of their city in order to make a new park. 

What was great about this book is that it got my daughter to think about issues such as racism and the way we treat our community and others, but did so in a gentle way such that she never felt that she was really learning anything. She was fascinated by this story and horrified by the injustices it describes, so it was a great way to get her thinking for herself about these issues. 

Most children have read Roald Dahl's amazing fiction, but what far fewer children have read is his amazing autobiographical books. This book captivated my ten and eight year olds like no others I have known. 

Telling the story of Dahl's childhood in the 1920s my children were horrified but captivated by the stories such as his surgery on the kitchen table without proper anesthetic. This book is told in the inimitable Roald Dahl style but is all the more compelling because the stories in it are true. It is hard to concieve that childhood could have changed so much in less than one hundred years and I'm sure it gave my own children a new appreciation of how easy and luxurious their own life is by comparison to a 1920s childhood. 

Of course this book is essentially one of comedy. Despite their occasional horror my children found this book riotously funny. 

My ten year old daughter took one look at this book when I bought it for her and cast it aside declaring that she would never read it. Then one of her friends started to read it, and hey presto suddenly it was ok for her to read it too. 

Within an hour of beginning this book she was utterly smitten, she couldn't put it down. Much like her Harry Potter books it was a struggle to even get her to put it down for long enough to eat, yet alone shower, tidy her room or do her homework. 

Although this book is a classic and set long ago nonetheless it is full of ideas and relevance for modern tweens. My daughter loved the idea of this secret place and spent long hours imagining her own secret garden, and her own place where she could go where no adults could discover her. She ended up loving this book as did all of her friends. 

This page is currently a work in progress. I will be adding to it as my daughter and I select her favourite books.