Best Adventure Books for 3rd Grade

Adventure stories give third graders room to roam, whether along a castle wall at night, up a mountainside or aboard a spaceship. This page gathers adventure books suited to readers around eight and nine, from richly illustrated picture books that still reward older children to longer chapter books. Caldecott Honor books Knight Owl and Up, Up, Ever Up! tell their quests largely through pictures, while Kwame Crashes the Underworld, a Coretta Scott King Award winner, and The Penderwicks, a National Book Award winner, offer bigger stories to share aloud or read alone. Nnedi Okorafor's graphic novel The Space Cat rounds out the list.