Garth Nix's keys to the Kingdom is pretty good, but not an easy read. He is one of my favorite authors, though, and another series of his, "The Seventh Tower" series, is broken into shorter books (presumably to make it accessible to younger readers), but is still an exciting and original adventure with good characters, etc.
"Gregor the Overlander" by Suzanne Collins, which leads into an excellent 5-book series.
Diana Wynne Jones various "Crestomanci" books are all good, too. (You can usually find them in sets, if not, the first one to look for is "The Lives of Christopher Chant", which sets the stage for any of the others). There are quite a few of these books that inter-weave and share characters and such, but they can each be read as a stand-alone story, too, without too much confusion.
The "Fablehaven" series by Brando Mull is good, too, and has a brother and sister as the central characters.
Oh, and if they are computer/gaming fans (especially the WoW type stuff), "Epic" and "Saga" by Conor Kostick put an interesting twist on the whole idea of online roleplaying (and what might happen if playing such games came to dominate society....)
posted 5 months ago. ( reply )
