I have compiled a reading list for each grade we have been through in our family so far.  This year, I am teaching fifth and second with a cute three year old in tow, and I realized I never put out a fifth grade reading list!  Here is the fourth grade list:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/06/02/waldorf-homeschooling-fourth-grade-reading-list/.

 

Here are few recommendations for fifth, compiled from the appendices in the Path of Discovery books by Eric Fairman and the Waldorf Student Reading List book.  I notice as we move up in the grades, there tends to be more overlap between grades  in terms of books recommended which is most likely due to each individual child being at different reading and maturity levels.  As always,  preview if you have a sensitive reader!

 

Pretty much anything by Enid Blyton  – for this age,  The Secret Seven are fun British mystery!

Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and  Trixie Belden…My current fifth grader likes Trixie Belden better than Nancy Drew.

The Hobbit – my voracious reader really only has been interested in this book this year; she attempted to start it last year but she didn’t get very far.  I wonder if different temperaments would devour this more readily.

I would add in here The Chronicles of Narnia if your child has not read those

The Island of the Blue Dolphins and the sequel Zia by Scott O’Dell

 

These are from the Waldorf Reading List for Fifth/Sixth Grade, we have not read all of these:

Padraic Colum The Children Of Odin:  The Book of Northern Myths

Sharon Creech:  Walk Two Moons

Karen Cushman:  Catherine, Called Birdy

Robert Stevenson:  Kidnapped and Treasure Island

Isabel Wyatt books

Ella Young Celtic Wonder Tales ; The Tangle-Coated Horse

Lois Lenski:  Prairie School; Strawberry Island

Patricia Maclachen:  Sarah:  Plain and Tall and the sequel is Skylark

Rosemary Sutcliff:   Light Beyond the Forest

TA Barron’s The Ancient One (my daughter also read TA Barron’s books regarding the Lost Years of Merlin and enjoyed those)

Ron Jones:  The Acorn People

Madeliene L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time, The Wind In the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, etc.

Anything by E. Nesbit

Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series

The Redwall series by Brian Jacques  (many children seem to find these monotonous after they read the first few)

Susan Coolidge:  What Katy Did and others

Ursula LeGuin:  A Wizard of Earthsea, etc.

The Root Cellar by Janet Lunn

Lucy M. Boston The Castle of Yew, The Children of Green Knowe, The Chimneys of Green Knowe, etc.

Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer

Secret of the Andes by Ann Nolan Clark

All of a Kind Family series – Sydney  (these are recommended for Third Grade as well)

Caddie Woodlawn

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

The Golden Goblet by Eloise McGraw

Books by Jean Little

 

I would add:  any books in the Little House series that you deem appropriate, and for botany I would add “Girls Who Looked Under Rocks:  The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists” and the books by Jean Craighead George such as “One Day In the Alpine Tundra” etc…some of these were recommended in the Christopherus Botany guide here: 

http://www.christopherushomeschool.com/Fifth-Grade-Botany-Bundle-p/chrb0011.htm

 

There are also, of course, many books that go along well with the them of Ancient Civilizations and Mythology as well.

 

I would love to hear some of the books your children really enjoyed in Fifth Grade, and what you all really enjoyed as a family.

 

Many blessings,

Carrie