Picture Books
A Child of Books by Oliver Jeffers & Sam Winston
An ode to stories and the power of the imagination, that includes an invite to come and enjoy them too. If any book summarizes these Seniors best, it’d be this one.
The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers
Henry eats books. No, not metaphorically. He literally eats books. And the more he eats, the smarter he finds himself. He starts setting his sights on being the smartest person in the world, but when his devouring starts to become too much for his mind and stomach to keep up with, he finds he has to give up his strange diet and find another way to devour the information in the books he craves.
Middle Grade Fantasy
The Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis
The classic series about the Pevensies and other children who travel to the magical land of Narnia and work to set things right in the ongoing battle of good versus evil.
The Princess and the Goblin series by George MacDonald
Princess Irene and Curdie have adventures fighting off goblins and discovering important things about themselves as they journey.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians series Rick Riordan
Demigod Percy Jackson works with other demigods to try and keep the world safe from Kronos and his monsters. (Continued on in several other branch off series.)
Alcatraz Smedry series by Brandon Sanderson
A series about a family with…odd talents who must save the world from falling into the hands of an evil group bent on controlling the way people see and understand the world.
The Rithmatist series by Brandon Sanderson
Joel wants to be a Rithmatist, a person who can make chalk circles, lines, and drawings come to life. He knows more than most teens his age do about Rithmatics. He can draw all the circles and stuff, but he missed the 8yr old ceremony and never became one. That doesn't quench his thirst to know as much as he can about Rithmatics, but there's just one problem...only Rithmatists are allowed to take Rithmatic classes. So Joel comes up with a hair-brained scheme to get to do an independent study with one of the Rithmatist professors at the academy he attends and his mother works for. But things get more serious when Rithmatist students start turning up missing with evidence of foul play. Can he and Professor Fitch figure out what is going on before it incites political problems or even war?
The Forbidden Library series by Django Wexler
Alice's world is turned upside down the first time when she accidentally sees her father having a conversation with a real, live fairy. Her world is then overthrown again when her father is presumed dead after the boat he is traveling on sinks in a storm and she is sent to live with an Uncle Geryon she's never heard of. Life there is rather dull, until she follows a cat through a rather unusual library on the grounds of the estate and finds herself inside a book. After this accident, Alice discovers that she is a Reader, someone who can find and use magic in books. Once this becomes known, it is clear that there are many people and other creatures interested in using Alice for her skill. Alice's one goal is to figure out what for sure happened to her father, while others want her to find a special book, the Dragon, that promises to be dangerous in the wrong hands.
Young Adult Fantasy
The Dark Lord of Derkholm series by Diana Wynne Jones
Residents of a fantasy world are fed up with the tours of people coming through to observe them in their fantasy roles so they plan a revolt, with hilarious results. This series pokes fun at all the fantasy tropes and cliches (in love). Best read by those who have devoured numerous fantasies already.
Howl’s Moving Castle series by Diana Wynne Jones
The adventures of the Wizard Howl, his family, and his quirky castle with doors to many lands.
The Beyonders series by Brandon Mull
Jason, 8th grader and baseball pitcher, finds himself entering an alternate universe after getting swallowed by a hippo. (Yes, you read that right. A hippo. Kudos to Mull for finding possibly the most unique way to get to an alternate universe.) Jason finds himself drawn into a quest to save this other world from the evil magician-emperor. As a person from Earth, he is known as a Beyonder. He quickly meets Rachel, another Beyonder around his age who was brought to this world the same time as he was. Some even believe they were called there. He meets all sorts of people and creatures as he finds himself in quite a variety of locations on this quest. (This is a good middle grade/YA crossover series. It appeals equally to both groups.)
The Ranger’s Apprentice series by John Flanagan
This series follows Will as he trains to become a Ranger under apprenticeship to legendary Ranger Halt. (You also get to know some other apprentices training to be knights, ambassadors, and cooks.) They travel much of the known reimagined medieval world as they work to fight evil and right wrongs with their bows and arrows. This is a light fantasy series in that there's not much magic at all except in the first book and it's a reimagined history with different location names and non-historical people but that are based on real historic cultures you can easily identify.
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
Do I even need to summarize some of these? Good wizards vs bad wizards. The good wizards are headed by the unlikely hero of a boy with a scar showing he managed not to die as a baby, the bad wizards are headed by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Most fantasy series fade into the background of popularity after a few years, this is showing no signs of fading.
Adult Fantasy
The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien
The classic stories about unassuming Hobbits who help save Middle Earth from evil. Seriously, if you don't know what this series is about, you need to rectify that immediately.
The Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson
An epic fantasy series that will eventually cover three eras in one place. In the first period (kinda Victorian-ish), mist covers the world and a group of renegades who can use metals to give them special powers work to try and free the world from the evil choking it. In the second time period (kinda Western-ish), two lawmen and a woman fight crime using those same special powers their ancestors did, and uncover further secrets about the world along the way. The third period is as yet unwritten, but Sanderson says will be futuristic.
Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
Princess Sarene arrives for her alliance wedding with the crown prince of Arelon to discover he’s dead. Unfortunately, she’s still married to him. Alone in a new country, Sarene must figure out how she can help her new home because it obviously has some serious political and magical issues. Meanwhile, her supposedly dead husband is inside Elantris, the previously unequalled magical city that for some reason has become cursed and is inhabited by those who wake up cursed with a strange affliction (and are thereby declared dead). Prince Raoden has decided he also must see if he can help figure out how to fix Elantris, his fellow cursed people, and his country. (Sanderson has a sequel in the works, but he is also working on a ton of other series as well, so it’s currently slated not to come out until 2020.)
The Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson
Sanderson’s magnum opus series (and if you haven't figured out by now Sanderson is hands down our teens' favorite fantasy author...the fact that they'll read these books is proof). The series is promised to be ten volumes long. It's an epic fantasy about the broken kingdom of Roshar, ravaged by magical storms, inhabited by a host of peoples playing political games and of which we get to know several characters intimately. Sorry, that’s the best I can do in this amount of space. A proper summary would take about 10 pages. The series is currently at 2 volumes (#3 coming this fall, I've already had students asking to get in line for it) and each volume weighs in at a whopping 1,000+ pages. It’s epic, intricately detailed, and amazingly inspires homework-laden teens to make time to devour door stopper books in less than a week (which is practically miraculous). I delayed buying this series for our library because of the daunting size of the books. I thought students would faint on sight of them. But after lending out my personal copy to several of the students who inspired this post who were desperate to get their hands on these, I realized the size didn't phase them, bought the library copies, and they've proceeded to be devoured by an astounding number of students. It just goes to show, with the proper intrinsic motivation, no book is too long.
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