Looking for some great books for tweens? You’ve come to the right place. Here are six awesome books for tweens. A bonus is that these are series, so the total amount of great books you’ll get out of this post is significantly greater than five.
1. The 39 Clues
This is a very exciting action-adventure series. It is still ongoing, and they’re currently on the second series of it, called Cahills vs. Vespers. Edit: Several years later the series has moved on, but new books are continuing to come out. I can only speak for the high quality of the first series and most of the second one.
This is a series about two kids, Dan and Amy Cahill (11 and 14 respectively; although their age changes throughout the series), who find out when their grandmother Grace dies that they’re part of the greatest family the world has ever known. Businessmen, inventors, scientists, mathematicians, politicians, spies; you name it. The source of their power is thirty-nine clues, which over the years have been scattered all over the globe. Whoever finds all thirty-nine clues will be the most powerful person in human history.
So they get a choice at the funeral, two million dollars or a hint to the first clue. For two penniless orphans, two million dollars is a fortune, but, of course, they take the clue.
It turns out there are four branches to the family, and thousands of Cahills, each willing to do anything possible to get the clues first; even kill. They travel all over the world in a search for the clues. Shocking secrets, amazing escapes, and even deaths accompany the hunt. There is also a ton of historical information, so you can learn a lot, too.
Another cool thing about it is that it’s a multi-author series, featuring famous authors such as Rick Riordan, Gordon Korman, Patrick Carman, Margaret Peterson Haddix, and more.
What really sets it apart is that it’s not just the books, but there are also cards included that you can enter into their website, and also plenty of games in your own search for the clues.
Although you can start anywhere, I’d advise starting at the beginning of the series. Highly recommended.
Buy the first book in The 39 Clues series, The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan.
2. Swindle
This is also an on-going series, written by the author of four of the books in the above series, Gordon Korman. There are currently seven books out. They are all action-packed adventures about a kid named Griffin Bing (The Man with the Plan) and his friends. Griffin is always trying to get into things and right wrongs. In Swindle, Griffin and his best friend Ben Slovak find a 1920 Babe Ruth baseball card. They take it to a collector to see if it’s worth anything and the guy totally swindles him. Griffin takes a mere hundred and twenty bucks for a rare card that is worth nearly a million.
So they try to right this wrong and steal the card back. The heist involves several other kids, and even the police get involved eventually. Very, very, exciting fast paced and exciting books. All of the books in this series (except for the fourth, which is still more lighthearted but still good) follow this kind of similar pattern of Griffin and his friends taking matters into their own hands. Kids just love this series!
3. Last Shot
This is the first book in a sports series by John Feinstein. The main characters are fourteen year-olds Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol. They are the two winners of a writing contest so they get to travel out to write about the Final Four basketball tournament.
While there, they realize there is a plot to blackmail one of the star players, Chip Graber, to throw a game on purpose. Stevie and Susan Carol work together with Chip to find out what is going on and to catch the guys who are orchestrating this. There are similar types of stories in books focused on baseball (Change Up), football (Cover Up and The Rivlary; the former being the Super Bowl and the latter being about Army vs. Navy), tennis (Vanishing Act), and swimming (Rush for the Gold) all with different plots and mysteries. There is no regard for previous plot-lines except in regards to character development, and that is pretty minor, so you can start with the book that covers your favorite sport.
John Feinstein is a well-respected sports journalist who knows the industry well and also a fine mystery writer, so these books are a treat. There are many twists of plot that make them exciting from cover to cover.
Buy Last Shot, Vanishing Act, Cover Up, Change Up, The Rivalry, or Rush for the Gold by John Feinstein.
4. On the Run
This is another series (one six-book series and a follow-up trilogy called Kidnapped) by Gordon Korman, the same author of the Swindle series, about two kids named Aiden and Meg Falconer whose parents get convicted as terrorist-aiders and sentenced to life in jail in “the trial of the century.” The Falconer family become the most hated
This is very bad for Aiden and Meg, obviously. They try foster care, but their parents being so well-known and so ubiquitously hated is major problem. Eventually they get sent to a low-security prison in order to take them out of the spotlight for a few years (despite the fact they have committed no crimes).
It is a horrible situation. They have to work on a farm and do school most of the day, living among thieves and murderers. Meg wants to get out of there to prove their parents innocent, but Aiden realizes there’s no way to do it. Except for one day, a fire breaks out. Aiden decides to let it go and burn the place down, so they can escape. Others jump, too, but one by one, the others get caught while Aiden and Meg manage to stay on the run.
Aiden and Meg know their parents are actually innocent. They were working for an FBI agent, not for terrorists! But he has disappeared off the face of the earth. To prove their parents innocence, they have to track him down, something the Falconers’ high-priced criminal attorneys were unable to do. And they must do it with the FBI chasing them down and a crazy killer who wants to make them dead.
This is one of my all-time favorites, an action-packed adventure that will keep you guessing.
Buy the first book in the series, Chasing the Falconers by Gordon Korman.
I’ve just told you about four great series that combine for a total of forty-three books. These should keep you busy for a while!
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