These Under-the-Radar Books Helped My 7-Year-Old's Reading Blossom

Olive & Beatrix gave my daughter her first taste of what it's like to really click with a book series.

By Ashley Austrew
Feb 05, 2019

Ages

6-8

These Under-the-Radar Books Helped My 7-Year-Old's Reading Blossom

Feb 05, 2019

Having a newly independent reader is a special thing. They still love the books you used to read to them when they were toddlers and preschoolers, but suddenly they have this brand new skill that they’re so excited about, and they’re developing a whole new relationship with books and reading. For parents, one of the big challenges is finding books that support the development of that new skill and interest, but aren’t too difficult, complex, or “grown up” for emerging readers. And that’s what I found with a budding book series called Olive & Beatrix.

The Olive & Beatrix series is a part of Scholastic’s Branches collection. The Branches books are designed specifically for kids who are transitioning to independent reading, but aren’t quite ready for full chapter books. They still have illustrations and plenty of sight words, but they also tell slightly more complex stories, broken down into easily digestible short chapters. The Branches collection includes dozens of popular titles, like The Owl Diaries and Kung Pow Chicken, but my 7-year-old daughter loves nothing more than science and anything even vaguely witchy or magical, so I knew the Olive & Beatrix series was the one for her.

MORE: Find the Perfect Branches Series For Your Early Reader

A Fun & Spooky Story of Twins

The Olive & Beatrix books tell the story of twin sisters with very different lives. Olive is a science whiz kid who loves working on experiments with her best friend, Eddie. But Beatrix is a witch, and she delights in using her powers to play tricks on her sister. The sisters engage in a unique kind of sibling rivalry, playing magical and scientific pranks on each other and creating silly mayhem, like a house full of giant spiders, that they ultimately must work together to resolve.

 

As soon as we got the books, my daughter flipped one open and started to read, and she couldn’t put it down. The books are written in a style that is part storybook and part graphic novel. There’s narrative text, but the characters also have little individual speech bubbles on each page. My 7-year-old loved this because it felt a little bit like a comic book, so it was more fun to read.

"She Breezed Through the First One in Small Bursts" 

The books also move beyond the simple text of easy reader books, but not so far that they’re too difficult for a child to read on their own. My daughter and I still do a lot of reading together, because listening to a parent read and being exposed to more complex words and plots is important for early readers. But it’s also important for them to gain confidence in being able to read solo, and that’s something my daughter definitely got from these books. She breezed through the first one in small bursts over a weekend, and we’d talk about it as she read. I asked her about what was happening in the story, what her favorite parts were, and what she liked about each character, and she had answers for every question because the books were really clicking for her.

A Taste of My Daughter's Reading Future 

As an adult who loves to read, there’s a feeling I get from books that’s hard to explain. You read a novel and disappear into another world, one that no one else quite understands the way you do because they weren’t on the journey with you. It becomes a sacred experience to open a book and disappear into a new place.

I don’t know if my daughter has that kind of experience when we read books together. Listening to someone read, while still very important for her development, is not quite the same as getting lost in a good book on your own. My goal is to help her develop that same love of reading that I’ve had since childhood. And I knew my daughter had gotten lost in her books—the good kind of lost—when she finished the second Olive & Beatrix book and asked me if the author is going to write more.

That’s the most exciting thing about the Branches books. They aren’t quite chapter books, in the traditional sense, but they’re a departure from what kids have been reading since they were babies, and a first taste of everything great that comes with reading independently in your tweens, teens, and into adulthood. When you find the series that’s right for your child, the books meet them where they are and show them just how far reading can take them.

Discover Olive & Beatrix

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