Any suggestions for reading during summer for the children going into year 5?
My DD is stuck up in Harry Potter series, Series of Unfortunate events and some Malorie Blackman's books. I think CSSE needs more advanced books. The thickness of Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy's book can be intimidating.
Any suggestions for reading list?

Thomas Hardy and Dickens are only suitable for Y5s who have already read other classic fiction.

They will just put students off.

CSSE, Habs, City and other schools carefully select parts of these novels that are accessible to ten and eleven year olds. There are other parts which really are not.

I would start with Wind in the Willows, The Secret Garden, Treasure Island,Kidnapped Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, What Katy did.

Once you have read them there are some lovely dvds available. The Secret Garden with Maggie Smith is fab.

I would also watch a film version of Oliver Twist and if it is available the wonderful version of Little Women that was on last Christmas. DG

My advice would be to let her read what she enjoys but ask lots of questions to test her grasp of inference.

Vocab can’t be expanded through games and by picking out easier passages of classics found online. In my experience forcing kids to read books they don’t want to read will cause more harm than good.

You've had great advice already but as well as the classics is look at some of the fantastic children's literature that's been written more recently that has great vocabulary as well.
Examples: the Inkheart series, thee Wildwoods series (Colin Meloy), the children's books by Trenton Lee Stewart (especially the Mysterious Benedict Society), the Penderwicks series.
My child who was an inveterate reader (and now enjoys lots of classics) struggled with some of the classics at your dd's age. She did love The Little Princess though.

The best advice, spot on!

+1 to all of the above. The author of the Inkheart series is Cornelia Funke. Philip Pullman, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman are also exceptional writers with some books suitable for that age range that will encourage reading. That’s what you want - the rest will come.

Unabridged audio books are an amazing and overlooked resource for expanding vocabulary and sentence structure painlessly. Listening to stories by any of the authors listed (and many more) helps listeners to learn new words in context. Reading words you’ve heard before is then far easier. Radio and podcasts count too, if you choose those with educated, well-spoken presenters who use a rich vocabulary.

There’s no shortage of interesting, well-written modern material. Start there.

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