Paula reads to our eight year-old twin boys for about 45 minutes every night. For the last several months this has involved reading the Harry Potter books, which has become a family ritual that the boys have grown to love and look forward to. To the extent that they throw a major wobbly if they even suspect that she is planning to give it a miss for a night.

So now we are about a quarter of the way through the last book in the series, and the boys are just starting to panic at the thought of the end of the series approaching.

So where do we go from here?

Does anyone have an idea of what two reasonably intelligent, cricket and chess obsessed eight-year-olds might want to read?

Cheers.

The Lemony Snicket series is supposed to be pretty good. I haven't read any of them, nor have I read any of the HP books, so I don't know if they're comparable. I do know that they're darkly humorous, so not sure if you've want to read them to your little ones.

Lemony Snicket

Garth Nix (Abhorsen Trilogy, Keys to the Kingdom...)

Lloyd Alexander (Prydain Series)

Philip Pullman (Dark Materials Trilogy)

Cornelia Funke (Inkheart, Inkspell, etc...)

Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl)

I really highly recommend the first and the last for that age, but the Lloyd Alexander's are classics.

Also the Earthsea novels by Ursula K. Le Guin

the william books? I liked them when I was 8. Don't know if they've stood the test of time

Another vote for Lemony Snicket.

As for cricket obsessed, ursus minor really enjoyed Lawrence Booth's From Arm Ball to Zooter.

Go back to the classics... Pippi Longstocking. The first book at least is utterly wonderful. I watched the TV series on DivX a couple of months ago, and was quite captivated by it all (partly for nostalgic reasons. Annika was my first TV crush).

I read it with Tau Junior back when he was 7 or 8, and he absolutely loved it.

If they like fantasy, why not The Chronicles of Narnia?

We are just getting to the stage with Marley of reading him books that he probably will be reading himself soon and the main series is The Secret Seven which we have just done about five books of.

We have just finsihed a book called "Say Cheese and Die" by R.L. Stine which not only kept him interested but we were fighting to read to him as well which is a good by-product. At the end, I found out that there is 44 horror-ish books by the saem guy so I shall be looking for them.

"Treasure Island" is a good one and I was surprised how much he enjoyed "Winnie The Pooh" as well

By the way, 45 minutes? Bloody hell, the woman is a saint

Where to begin?

The Silver Sword by Ian Serailler
The turbulent term of Tyke Tiler by Gene Kemp
Private Peaceful - Michael Morpurgo
Fire, bed and bone - Henrietta Branford
The Giggler treatment - Roddy Doyle
Kensuke's Kingdom - Michael Morpurgo
The firework maker's daughter - Phillip Pullman

I could go on, but anyone of these will bring enormous pleasure.

I don't know if it's still in print, but The Voyage of QV66 by Penelope Lively is brilliant.

The Percy Jackson series is much more enjoyable than Harry Potter, I find. Funnier and less self-conscious, and lots of great Greek mythology.

Lemony Snicket's 'Series of Unfortunate Events' is certainly the first place to go, for something a little more ingenious and subversive than the Harry Potter novels. If you're after something more traditional, Puffin have reissued a dozen children's classic titles with some pretty smart new cover designs and appendices featuring facts about the story and author.

My nephew in law is into chess and cricket and Harry Potter. I recently gave him a couple of the Terry Pratchetts for younger readers and he really likes those.

For the chess angle, I would have suggested Walter Tevis's The Queen's Gambit, because it's a great story about a lonely, eight-year-old orphan girl who discovers a natural ability for chess, and her subsequent battle to attain grandmaster status.

However, there are themes that are probably not for eight-year-olds - she develops an alcohol problem, for one thing.

Margaret Mahy's books are usually good - the short stories we've read are witty and anarchic. Try The Great Piratical Rumbustification & The Librarian and The Robbers (two short stories in one book).

Tove Jansen's original Moomin books are wonderful, sad at times, magical, but also unexpectedly funny. Her original drawings are far better than the cartoony versions that appeared later.

Kenneth Oppel does great boys-type stuff, including Airborn and Skybreaker, and his previous Darkwing, Silverwing, Sunwing stuff is popular.

Norton Juster - The Phantom Tollbooth
Sally Prue - Cold Tom

Both of these are incredible.