children’s book recs?

[dragonlady7]

guess they're YA!, i have a whole list of stuff farmkid is too young for yet that will be perfect, but i figured i'd solicit input

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My older sister just sent out the annual “So, my children need Christmas presents” email, which I’m not wording well– it’s always a very flustered “ah crap you want me to tell you what they want and I need to come up with something” because she lives several hundred miles away and we don’t see one another very often and that was steadily improving as they got older and now it’s been eight months and probably we can’t cross state lines anytime soon 😭 but anyway.

She mentioned that the middle one, a boy of … 11? I think he just turned 11… is hard to shop for. He likes playing sports, mostly, and doesn’t like fashion or toys.

But he loves books. And she said she’d love more books for him. Currently, he loves Eragon and Harry Potter, and is making an attempt at the Lord of the Rings. (When Farmsister was his age, I read her the scary parts of the Two Towers, out loud, in a tent, by flashlight, and it was the most fun summer we ever had together, so. Yeah, I was 16; while all you were out partying, I studied the blade hobbits.) So I’ve got a few books in mind I might send for him, but I’d love some more recommendations.

And the other boy, he’s not that into fiction, and he’s just about to turn 13 and loves The Way Things Work type of books– but he’s learning French, and I was wondering if anyone had any recs for easy-to-read books in French that aren’t little kid books, you know? That one’s more of a long shot. (An easy-to-read book in French about how something works, even better, but like, how do you even look for that?)

(He, by the way, is flourishing in this pandemic– remote learning is perfect for him because he doesn’t get sucked into being a cut-up or acting out for attention, he doesn’t have to roll out of bed until 8:45 am, he gets to be by himself most of the time but his family is around so he’s not unattended [he’d frequently had to be a latchkey kid before and he hated that], he really can devote himself to learning what he’s interested in, and he’s just doing really well, which is fantastic, as most of the other kids I know are Not Doing So Great. He’s been studying French for a while but never cared until now; now he thinks it’s cool. Who knows! He’s on his own knowledge journey.)

The little girl is getting a doll and needs doll clothes so I’m super set on that, I just have to get off my ass and actually sew some things. And Farmkid probably will like doll clothes too so I’m just gonna roll with that.