After five years in the pre-k/k group I moved up to fifth grade a month into the school year.  Most of my kids are below grade level by a grade with a handful above grade level.  Ideas?  I have some of the BONE series

Percy Jackson, a few Diary of a Wimpy kid.  Thank you!!

Hoot & Flush by Carl Hiaasen.

Any and all Little House books(Laura Ingalls Wilder),

Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis)

Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling)

Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)--maybe a little challenging, but there's nothing wrong with challenging

Encyclopedia Brown series

Trixie Belden series

Gecko and Sticky (I forget the author, but my fifth grader adored--and adores those books)

Anything by Jerry Spinelli

The Watsons go to Birmingham - anything by Christopher Paul Curtis

Anything by Rick Riordan

Anything by Paulsen

The Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan

I'm reading the series right now.  They're really fun, action packed, and fast paced.  They also teach really good lessons about courage and doing the right thing.  I think I read somewhere that they were suggested for 5th grade and up as well, so it would be perfect.

The Pushcart War by Jean Merril  - here's the introduction to it:

"As it has been only ten years ince the Pushcart War, I was surprised when one of my nephews a few months ago looked puzzledat the mentioned of a Mighty Mammoth. Then I realized that he had probably never seen a Mighty Mammoth. (He was only two at the time of the war and, moreover, was living in Iceland where his father had been sent on a government assignment.)

That a twelve year old boy might never have seen a Mighty Mammoth was understable. What astonished me was that he had never even heard of one. But I have since discovered that there has never been a history of the Pushcart War written for young people.

Professor Lyman Cumberly's book, The Large Object Theory of History, drawn mainly from his observations of the Pushcart War, is a brilliant work. However it is written primarily for college students.

I have always believed that we cannot have peace in the world until all of us understand how wars start. And so I have tried to set down the main events of the Pushcart War in such a way that readers of all ages may profit from whatever lessons it offers.

Although I was living in New York at the time of the war and saw the streets of New York overrun with Mighty Mammoths and Leaping Lemas, I did not know any of the participants personally - except Buddy Wisser. I did contribute in a small way to the decisive battle described in Chapter XXXIV but, lie most New Yorkers, was sleep in the early days of the war as to what was at issue - until Buddy Wisser alerted us all with his 160-by-160-foot enlargement of Marvin Steeley's photograph of the Daffodil Masacre."

This book is a fun story in of itself, but made even more fun by the attempts of the author to make it appear as though she's writing a non-fiction story. It's almost hard to believe it is fiction!

~ J:-)mi, aka CTF Devourer

www.ctfdevourer.com