Two Great Book Series to Explore with Your Kids - MetroFamily Magazine
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Two Great Book Series to Explore with Your Kids

by Jennifer Geary

Reading Time: 2 minutes 

Happy New Year!  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s Eve and that you got lots of rest and are ready to start again! This week I want to share with you a couple of book series that my nine year old son and I have been enjoying lately.

Earlier in the year we were in a reading slump and I couldn’t decide what our next read aloud should be. Like any modern homeschooling mom, the first place I went was Facebook, where one of my friends recommended The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place. Our library had the first book and by the time we were done with the first chapter we were hooked and I put the rest on hold.  These books tell the story of the three Incorrigible children, Alexander, Beowulf, and Cassiopeia, who were raised by wolves until they were discovered by Lord Fredrick Ashton.  He brings them back to his estate and hires Penelope Lumley, a recent graduate of the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, to be the children’s governess.  Mysterious things keep happening at Ashton Place, though, and Penelope seeks to find the answers—only to find that many of the mysteries are intertwined. These books are just so entertaining that we read through the first three back to back within a couple of weeks and are almost finished with the fourth one, which I got for Christmas.  It seems like so many chapter books for older kids tend to be more of a boy book or a girl book, but this series is one that I think anyone would enjoy.

As we were waiting for the fourth book in the Incorrigible series to come out, an email came across from my homeschool group about The Great Brain series.  We tried the first one and my son did not want me to stop reading! These books, narrated by J.D. Fitzgerald, follow the exploits (literally and figuratively) of his older brother Tom, also known as The Great Brain. Tom can solve just about any dilemma with his great brain and he often puts it to use to benefit himself financially, much to the chagrin of the other kids in town. There are eight books in this series and they each detail Tom’s schemes to increase his bank account and the trouble he often finds himself in as a result.  Each book does give the same background information, which can become tedious if you’re reading them back to back like we’ve been doing, but is helpful if you aren’t able to read them in order.  Four of the eight books are out of print but we were able to find them all at our library.

My plan with series is often to read the first book aloud and then let my son continue on if he’s interested, but both of these series have been so entertaining that I didn’t want to miss out!  If you’re looking for something new to read with your older children, try out these series and I think you will both enjoy them!

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