When a kid finishes a book before you’ve had time to find the next one, you stop looking for a good book and start looking for a series: something long enough to last, varied enough to stay interesting, and matched to where your child actually is as a reader. The twelve series below cover roughly ages 8 to 14 and a wide range of reading personalities, from the reluctant reader who needs an immediate hook to the voracious one who needs 22 books. Each entry says specifically who a series fits and what it does that the others on this list don’t.

1. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

Ages: 8 to 12 (the youngest entry point on this list)

Seven books. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is one of the most perfectly constructed portal-fantasy openings ever written, and it works at 8 when most of the other series here don’t. Four children step through a wardrobe into a world where it is always winter and never Christmas, and Lewis trusts the image to carry the reader before he explains anything. There is an allegorical layer (Christian symbolism throughout), but a child who doesn’t know it’s there will never miss it; the adventure stands entirely on its own.

One note on reading order: start with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe regardless of what newer editions suggest. Publication order works; internal chronological order (starting with The Magician’s Nephew) doesn’t.

The series that made an entire generation treat wardrobes with suspicion.

2. The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall

Ages: 8 to 12

Five books. Four sisters (and, eventually, the next generation) spend summers that feel genuinely alive on the page: a rented cottage, a neighboring boy named Jeffrey, the particular texture of long days with people you love. Birdsall wrote it as a deliberate love letter to Little Women and Edward Eager, and the nod shows in the best way. Each book is self-contained enough to read alone and stronger as a series.

This is the entry for the reader who wants character over plot, who would rather spend 300 pages in one summer with people they care about than hurtle through a world-ending quest. There is no equivalent on this list.

The comfort-read series for readers who want to live inside a book, not race through it.

3. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

Ages: 9 to 12

Eight books. Artemis Fowl is a 12-year-old criminal genius who discovers fairies are real and immediately tries to kidnap one for ransom. Colfer’s series runs on heist logic rather than hero’s-journey logic, which makes it unusual in children’s fantasy: the protagonist is calculating, often wrong, and improves across the series in ways that feel earned. The fairy civilisation is detailed and funny. The chapters are short and the books move fast.

This is the gateway series for the reluctant reader. Constant forward motion, an anti-hero protagonist who is allowed to be clever without being likeable right away, and a premise that hooks on the first page. If a child has bounced off slower series, start here.

For the kid who found Harry Potter a bit too wholesome.

4. Anne of Green Gables Series by L.M. Montgomery

Ages: 10 to 14

Eight books. Anne arrives at Green Gables at eleven, an orphan no one expected to be a girl, and the series follows her from that arrival through marriage, children, and the First World War. Children’s series almost never follow their protagonist into adulthood; Anne does, and the continuity gives the later books a weight the early ones couldn’t carry alone.

The series is for bookish girls especially, since Anne herself is a compulsive reader and talker who processes the world through language. That said: L.M. Montgomery wrote the first book in 1908, and the prose reflects that. Children who read it young sometimes carry it for life; children who find the pace too slow at 10 often come back at 13 and love it.

The series for the child who needs to see a bookish, imaginative girl at the center of the story.

5. The Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale

Ages: 10 to 14

Four books (The Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River Secrets, Forest Born). Shannon Hale took the source material of Grimm’s fairy tales and built a coherent world where speaking to wind, fire, or water is a real and dangerous power. Each book centers a different young woman; the series doesn’t repeat itself across four entries, which is harder than it sounds.

This is the series for readers who have cleared the obvious shelf. Most parents won’t have heard of it, which means a child who finds it has the pleasant sensation of discovering something on their own. Closest comparison in tone: Tamora Pierce (entry 7 below), but lighter and more rooted in fairy-tale imagery.

An underrated series that rewards readers who have already worked through the well-known picks.

6. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman

Ages: 11 to 14

Three books (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass). Lyra lives in a world where every human soul takes the form of an animal called a daemon; the trilogy spans parallel universes, confronts organized religion directly, and treats its young readers as capable of handling genuine moral complexity. The books get longer and harder across the three volumes, by design. Pullman has since published two volumes of a companion trilogy set in the same world, The Book of Dust (La Belle Sauvage and The Secret Commonwealth), with a third forthcoming.

The comparison to Harry Potter comes up constantly and misses the point. Where HP rewards patience with comfort, this trilogy rewards it with something closer to disturbance: characters face real loss, and Pullman doesn’t soften what it costs. The right entry age is closer to 11 or 12 than 9. The experience at that age is different from anything else on this list.

The series most likely to make a young reader feel trusted with something real.

7. The Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce

Ages: 10 to 14

Four books, opening a much larger Tortall universe (Pierce has written around 18 books set there). Alanna of Trebond disguises herself as a boy to train as a knight in a world that won’t allow girls to do it. Pierce wrote it in 1983, and it was one of the first fantasy series to put a female protagonist who earns her place through work, failure, and stubbornness at the center of the story.

The sweet spot is girls who want a female protagonist whose competence isn’t handed to her by prophecy. The readership has always been broader than that: the training sequences, the world-building, and Alanna’s specific stubbornness work for any reader who likes a protagonist who keeps getting back up. A child who loves these four books has 14 or more Tortall books ahead.

The series that put feminist fantasy on the children’s shelf before there was a name for it.

8. The Redwall Series by Brian Jacques

Ages: 9 to 13

Twenty-two books. Woodland creatures (mice, badgers, otters, weasels, rats) fight epic battles for their homes against scheming, violent villains. The moral architecture is clear: the good creatures fight hard; the bad ones are almost operatically evil and enjoy it. Jacques is famous for his feast descriptions, whole pages devoted to what the mice are eating, which sounds odd and becomes oddly irresistible by the second book.

Brian Jacques died in 2011, so the series is complete at 22 books. This solves a specific problem: a voracious reader who tears through series can read Redwall for two years without running out. There is no other series on this list that addresses the “they’ve already read everything” problem as completely.

The only series on this list that can outlast even a very fast reader.

9. The Abhorsen Series by Garth Nix

Ages: 12 and up

Six books, starting with Sabriel. The world is split by a Wall: on one side, technology and a version of normalcy; on the other, a place where the dead walk and magic is real. The protagonist is an Abhorsen, a necromancer whose job is to send the dead back where they belong, using a set of bells that each do something different. Garth Nix’s magic system is rigorously constructed and genuinely original; the rules matter, and the books use them.

The series earns its darkness: characters die, and the deaths mean something. Start with Sabriel and give it 50 pages before deciding. It opens with less context than most fantasy series and rewards patience.

For readers who want fantasy that trusts them to handle what it puts in front of them.

10. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Ages: The Hobbit at 10 to 12; The Lord of the Rings at 12 and up

Four volumes. Tolkien built the conventions every other series on this list uses: the fully mapped secondary world, the quest structure, the ensemble of different peoples, the sense that the history of the world runs far deeper than any single story. Reading Tolkien after working through the other series on this list is like seeing the founding document of a tradition.

The Hobbit works as a standalone at 10 and is genuinely accessible; The Lord of the Rings requires patience and a different kind of attention. Start with The Hobbit regardless, and don’t push LotR until the child asks for it. Some readers are ready at 12; others need to be 14. Either is fine.

The root of the tree: everything else on this list grows from here in some direction.

11. The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

Ages: 12 and up

More than 20 books across McCaffrey’s original series and her son Todd’s continuations. Pern is a colony planet (this is science fiction with fantasy presentation): the dragons are genetically engineered from small fire lizards to fight against Threadfall, a periodic biological threat from space. The emotional center is the Impression, the moment when a newly hatched dragon chooses its rider; McCaffrey makes you feel the weight of that permanent bond across every book.

Start with Dragonflight (the first published, 1968). The prose style reflects its era, which some readers find charming and others find slow. Worth knowing before you hand it to a child. The series is for readers who want to understand where dragon-rider stories come from, and who want something older, denser, and more emotionally complex than most modern entries in that category.

For readers who want the source material, not the echo.

12. The Skyward Series by Brandon Sanderson

Ages: 12 and up

Four books (Skyward, Starsight, Cytonic, Defiant), complete. Spensa wants to become a starfighter pilot in a human colony under constant alien attack; the series delivers escalating scale and a satisfying complete story arc across four volumes. Sanderson’s chapters are short and his pacing is extremely clean, which makes the series a good gateway into his larger work for readers who want more when they finish.

The comparison to Dragonriders of Pern is structural (both involve a young person bonded to a creature for aerial combat), but Skyward is faster and built for the reader who wants the energy of a video game in a book. If Redwall solves the endless-supply problem, Skyward solves the “I need something that moves right now” problem.

Modern YA sci-fi with clear stakes, propulsive pacing, and a complete story.

Where to start

If 12 entries is still too many to choose from:

• After Harry Potter, looking for the next big thing: His Dark Materials (complex, challenging, brilliant) or Artemis Fowl (faster, funnier, better for reluctant readers).
• For a younger reader, 8 to 10: The Chronicles of Narnia or The Penderwicks.
• For a bookish girl who wants to see herself in the story: Anne of Green Gables or The Song of the Lioness.
• For the reader who tears through everything too fast: Redwall (22 books, problem solved).
• For the reader who wants the classics before the modern series: start with Tolkien, then Narnia, then everything else.
• For a modern sci-fi reader: Skyward first, then Dragonriders of Pern when they want to go deeper.

If your child is just starting their reading journey, top books for first-time readers is the right starting point, and when they’re ready for read-alouds that bridge into chapter books, the best books for 5 year olds covers that territory too.

And That’s It

These twelve series cover a wide enough range of age, tone, and reading personality that one of them fits almost any young reader. Match to your child’s current taste, hand them the first book, and let the series do the rest.

Eternal Reads