Novels for 6 Year Olds

Why it worksFive separate short chapters, so you can read one and stop - the natural bridge between picture books and chapter books. 'The Letter', where Frog sends Toad a letter by snail and they wait four days for it, is the one children ask for.

Worth knowingThe longest book in this set - over twenty minutes end to end - and gentle where children who want jokes and volume find it flat next to Elephant & Piggie. Read one chapter, not five.

Why it worksFive stories, of which 'The List' and 'Cookies' are the two most quoted early-reader stories ever written - Toad loses the list of things to do and therefore cannot do them; the friends give away all the cookies to acquire willpower. Each story is 300 to 400 words and complete, so a child reads a whole thing in a sitting, which is what builds the habit.

Worth knowing'The Dream' is genuinely melancholy - Toad dreams himself famous and Frog shrinks away to nothing - and it unsettles some children. Quiet throughout; a child who wants Dog Man will find it slow.

Why it worksThe fourth and last collection, and the one with 'Alone' in it - Frog wants a day by himself and Toad assumes he has done something wrong. It is the clearest short text in print about a friend needing space, which is a conversation most five- and six-year-olds are having at school.

Worth knowing'Alone' can read as rejection to a child worried about friendships, and needs the last page to land - do not stop halfway. The kite story assumes you know what a kite is meant to do.

Why it worksAn old man who is lonely goes to get a kitten and is given an old cat nobody wants. 576 words, and it is the only early reader we know that is honestly about being old - stiff joints, a house that is too quiet - written so a five-year-old understands it without being told what to feel.

Worth knowingSlow and unfunny by design; hand it to a child who liked Frog and Toad, not one who liked Dog Man. Mr Putter's loneliness in the first chapter is stated plainly and a child who worries about grandparents may pick that up.

Why it worksA pig moves to a small town and, in the best of the three stories, gets so tired of a neighbour who visits every single day that he sprays her with a hose. Rylant writes adult social awkwardness at a five-year-old's reading level, and children find the hose entirely reasonable, which is the joke.

Worth knowingThe comedy is about neighbours, library books and wanting to be left alone - very quiet, and a child after action will not stay. Went out of print for years; make sure you are getting the current Acorn reissue.

Why it worksTold to dust the furniture, Amelia Bedelia covers it in dusting powder; told to draw the drapes, she sketches them. Every joke is one idiom taken literally, which is precisely the language skill a five- or six-year-old is acquiring - children laugh here because they have just worked out that words do two jobs.

Worth knowingThe humour dies completely if the child does not know the idiom, so several jokes need explaining, which flattens them. Amelia Bedelia is a domestic servant taking orders from her employers, and the 1963 framing shows.

Why it worksA pig who sleeps in her owners' bed causes the bed to fall through the floor, and her rescue attempt is really a search for buttered toast. Full-colour Van Dusen paintings on nearly every spread, twelve tiny chapters, and DiCamillo's sentences are short but the vocabulary is not - 'porcine wonder' turns up more than once - so it reads up rather than down.

Worth knowingAt 1,929 words this is the shortest of the true chapter books here and a strong reader will finish it in twenty minutes. The elderly neighbour Eugenia is written as comically horrible, which a literal child may take at face value.

Why it worksMercy takes the wheel of the Watsons' Cadillac. It is the funniest of the six because the chaos escalates properly - a stowaway, a stolen car, a policeman - and the toast payoff is the same as book one, which children find satisfying rather than repetitive.

Worth knowingDepends on knowing the cast from book one; Eugenia and Baby Lincoln arrive with no introduction. Mercy drives a car, which a very literal five-year-old may need told is not real.

Why it worksPrincess Magnolia leaves a tea party through a broom-cupboard chute to fight a monster, then goes back before anyone notices. It solves a specific problem - a child who wants a princess book and a monster book at once - and the double life is the joke, not the moral.

Worth knowingATOS 3.2 makes it a read-aloud for most fives rather than a solo read. The monsters are comic rather than frightening, but the illustrations are dark-toned and a few children read the cover as scary.

Why it worksIt is Magnolia's birthday and she has to keep leaving her own party to fight monsters, while twelve princesses notice she keeps disappearing. Tighter than book one because the clock is running, and the near-misses give a five-year-old the specific pleasure of knowing more than the characters do.

Worth knowingFunnier if you have read book one - the broom-cupboard chute and Blacky the pony are not re-explained.

Why it worksDory's older siblings refuse to play with her, so she has an imaginary monster friend, an imaginary villain and a fairy godmother, and the book takes all three completely seriously. The drawings are scribbly enough that a child believes Dory drew them, and the youngest-sibling frustration is the truest thing in this whole set.

Worth knowingThe line between Dory's imagination and the real world is deliberately never drawn, which a literal child finds unsettling rather than delightful. Her siblings are properly mean for most of the book.

Why it worksThree short stories in speech bubbles between a relentlessly cheerful narwhal and a sceptical jellyfish, in blue and yellow only. At 848 words it is the gentlest possible first graphic novel - two speakers, two colours, nothing to track - and the joke is entirely kindness meeting cynicism, so there is nothing to shield a five-year-old from.

Worth knowingVery short. A child who has been reading Dog Man will finish this in ten minutes and want more, and the whole series is this length.

Why it worksNarwhal decides to be a superhero without having a superpower, and spends the book cheerfully failing to find one. Same two-colour, two-speaker format as book one, so a child who managed that one reads this one unaided - which is the whole reason to buy the second in this particular series rather than move on.

Worth knowingStands alone but the running jokes (waffles, the imaginary pod) are funnier if you have read book one.

Why it worksAlmost wordless - Owly and Wormy speak in pictograms inside speech bubbles rather than sentences, so a child who cannot yet decode reliably reads a whole graphic novel on their own and is correct about what happened. There is no faster way to make a five-year-old feel like a reader.

Worth knowingOwly's first friends are two hummingbirds who have to migrate away, and the goodbye is the emotional centre of the book - it makes some children cry. Because the vocabulary is symbols, it does not build decoding skill; use it for confidence, not phonics.

Why it worksA wolf, a snake, a shark and a piranha decide to become heroes and their first act is freeing 200 dogs from a pound. At 2,311 words it is less than half a Dog Man, mostly two-tone cartoon panels and shouted dialogue, and it is genuinely the easiest way into this whole lane - the shortest book that still looks and feels like a chapter book.

Worth knowingEnds on a cliffhanger and expects you to buy book two; there is no self-contained resolution. Mr Snake eats a guinea pig in one running joke, and the shark's disguises rely on cross-dressing gags that read dated to some parents.

Why it worksBook two adds Legs the tarantula and turns the format into a heist - blueprint, gadgets, a chicken farm with laser fences. It is the one where the running gag becomes a system: every plan collapses because Mr Snake is selfish, which is a joke a six-year-old can predict and then enjoy predicting.

Worth knowingMust be read after book one - the team, the cliffhanger and the guinea-pig joke all carry over. Legs is a large hairy spider drawn in close-up more than once.

Why it worksThe whole book is drawn as comic panels with hand-lettered speech balloons, so a child who has stalled on solid pages of prose gets a page they can decode a bubble at a time and still feel they are reading a fat 231-page book. The plot - a police dog's head sewn onto a policeman's body - is settled in eight pages, and after that every chapter is a self-contained caper you can stop at.

Worth knowingThe jokes run on farting, drool and a villain who is a cat, and Pilkey writes deliberate misspellings ('Supa Buddies', 'Chapter Too') as a running gag - a child still shaky on spelling may copy them. ATOS puts the text at 2.6, but the visual density is genuinely busy and some six-year-olds need an adult to point at which panel comes next for the first two chapters.

Why it worksA boy in silver underpants falls out of the sky with no memory and enormous power, and the two children who find him have to hide him. Full-colour, wide panels, and the pacing is deliberately cinematic - it is the graphic novel to hand a child who has finished Dog Man and wants a real story rather than a run of gags.

Worth knowingThe robot antagonist and the fight scenes are properly action-driven and louder than anything else in this set; the first book ends mid-story. Hilo's amnesia and the question of what he actually is runs across several books, so this is a commitment.

Why it worksPhoebe skips a stone off a unicorn's head, is granted a wish, and wishes for the unicorn to be her best friend - who turns out to be magnificently vain. It is a newspaper-style comic strip collection, so the unit is four panels rather than a chapter, which suits a child who reads in two-minute bursts.

Worth knowingATOS 3.4 with a lot of dry, adult-shaped irony - Marigold's vanity jokes land better at eight than six. Being a strip collection, there is no plot to pull a reader through.