Science fiction, it is the reading material of geeks! With our kids playing with Legos, doing Robotics, and spending gobs of time on computers every day, they are turning into geeks younger and younger. So it sounds like science fiction is the reading material of choice.
Finding science fiction that is subject appropriate and reading level appropriate can be a challenge. Especially if you weren’t a big science fiction reader as a child yourself. Personally I had just heard of or read science fiction that was Young Adult or (mostly) even more mature than that. But there is a wealth of great science fiction for juvenile readers!
Here are 5 series to get your young readers going. Some of these are newer offerings and some are relatively old books! My kids have read all of these so they are personal recommendations. But remember, we are recommending these series for your kids but not everything by these authors! Some of them (like Heinlein) have a variety of offerings for a variety of maturity!
1) Lucky Starr series: These are actually by Isaac Asimov but he wrote them under the name Paul French. He wrote these in the hopes for them to be a television series back in the 1950’s. There are 6 books in this series!
2) Heinlein’s Juveniles Book Series: Robert Heinlein wrote a series of 12 juvenile books. But series is a bit odd because they don’t share characters or follow a timeline. The last book, Have Space Suit-Will Travel, is one of NerdPie’s favorite scifi books and she always recommends it!
3) Rod Allbright and the Galactic Patrol: This is a 4 book collection ( Aliens Ate My Homework, I Left My Sneakers in Dimension X, The Search for Snout, Aliens Stole My Body) by Bruce Coville. This follows the adventures of a 6th grader named Rod Allbright. It is a super cute and fun series.
4) NERDS: This is a super fun series of 5 books by Michael Buckley. It is the geeky adventures of a group of nerdy friends. My kids love, love, love this series. To the point that they almost did a coordinated Halloween costume themed by the characters.
5) Tom Swift: This is like a science fiction series that has over 100 books! These books first made their appearance in 1910 and have continued until 2007. Tom Swift is an inventor and adventurer who inspired people like Steve Wozniak and Isaac Asimov so he has that going for him;). What I want to know is how come I never heard of these when I was a kid?
So there you have 5 kid friendly Science Fiction series for your kids (and possibly you) to read!
