Maybe an Indigenous People’s History of the US for Younger Readers?

In terms of non-fiction I can recommend Ian Mortimer, his “Time travellers guide to ...” books are a easy to read look at daily life in Britain during the Middle Ages and early modern period. In the same vein check out the books by Ruth Goodman. She is reenactor and experiments historian and has been in the very popular “Tudor/monastery/Victorian/Edwardian/wartime Farm” series. You can find all those for free on YouTube. For a more academic look at life in pre-black death England you can check out Judith Bennett’s A Medieval Life, which looks at one specific person and her family in a village in England.

For other books what I can suggest doing is what I did as a child: go to the library and go to the history section. Browse. This way she will get a chance to see if there are topics or places that catch her eye and libraries tend to have a better selection than bookstores.

I can also recommend the Royal Diaries series of books. They aren’t academic but they do provide a great starting point for learning about different times and Royal women, especially those less known in the West such as Kaiulani,the last queen of Hawaii, or Nzinga,the Queen of Ndongo and Matamba. The books also have historical notes at the back.

I will also plug in two books I loved as a kid:

Weapons: a pictorial history by Edwin Tunis The Medieval Fortress by JE and HW Kaufmann

And a textbook I really liked in Uni; Cambridge illustrated history: China by Patricia Buckley Ebrey

Grade 7 is a great time to look into different eras and topic since your daughter can both enjoy things written for a younger audience as an introduction and also understand and enjoy books meant for an adult audience. Depending on how well she can understand books meant for an adult audience I can also recommend looking into The Great Courses audio lectures, they are available through audible and come with supplementary lecture notes. The lectures are a fantastic use of audible credits.

I would recommend getting a Historical Atlas of some sorts. Not only do they go into detail about the important events/trends in world history that may be glossed over or not even mentioned in her classroom, but the accompanying maps make the history much more approachable and gives the reader some respite to walls of text.

I’m in my 20s now and spent hours pouring over the maps in the Illustrated Historical Atlas I had as a kid when I went back home for thanksgiving. The cool thing about books like those is that they’ll be interesting even as an adult and can make a great coffee table book in the historically inclined home!

Howard Zinn's A Young People's History of the United States would be at the top of my recommendations for a bright kid who's interested in history. Zinn goes into those details and sanitized events and takes a more bottom up perspective on them rather than the traditional top down history that's taught in K-12, which can really help a reader engage with the work rather than reading it passively. Since he tends to tell the stories of "common people" rather than the elites that typically make it into the history books used in American public schools, it makes history more personal and more interesting to a lot of people.

I would point out that Zinn's work is pretty roundly accepted to be biased, but that could very easily be incorporated into her education. Learning to detect and account for bias in the things you read is such an important skill that doesn't tend to be taught below the college level in my experience.

In addition to books, you could also potentially utilize websites like Stanford's "Reading Like a Historian" to help her get more out of her reading. It has lessons on things like contextualizing what she's reading and evaluating sources that are on a kid's level.

Good luck!

Editing to fix grammar and add: I know that Howard Zinn isn't necessarily popular among historians, but I'm recommending this book largely because his A People's History of the United States was what truly sparked my interest in history as a teenager. I liked the subject but was bored by what I learned in school and this was such a different perspective that I found myself drawn to look deeper into the topics he wrote about so that I could become more informed. I know of at least a couple of other people who consider that book their jumping off point into deeper history as well, so I believe his work has value despite its issues.

You may find some helpful recommendations here as well.

In addition to the books I recommended to the other poster, I would strongly advocate for books that highlight women in history. History vs. Women by Anita Sarkeesian and Ebony Adams and The Book of Gutsy Women by Chelsea and Hillary Clinton both do a good job of resituating women in history.

Hello, I was quite a history nerd when I was younger and still am! I really loved reading things like 12 years a slave, uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Magna Carta, New Jim Crow various historical graphic novels and etc. I also really loved listening to podcasts, documentaries and various YouTube videos and also still do when I have time and something that I often do to help with my studies in History. What I would recommend is books that would fit her historical interests if she has any yet. As you can tell I was and am quite a African American History nerd so that is what I primarily read/listened to. I also found interest in Chinese religious history as well after taking my first world history class in middle school. Books that I would recommend are: EH Carr what is History?, Richard Evans- In defense of History, History- A very short intro- John H. Arnold- there are also many other “a very short intro” books within the series such as: Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt, Confucianism, Chinese lit and etc. I would also recommend historical graphic novels such as Incognegro and Abina. I think also with the study of history especially when in college even more so if she decides to study history in depth is learning historical methods and historiography which is never something that could be taught too young in my opinion. Some books that I would recommend for learning historiography and historical methods such as writing are Doing History by Wendy Pojmann and Historiography by Ernst Breisach. I think it is important to stress to her how different History classes will be in college and that writing is a skill that is very important to practice to succeed in college history classes. It is also important to mention that historical writing is much different than writing say that you would do in a English class. I also feel it is important to be introduced to history being more than memorization of dates and events but more about gaining knowledge and theories to why these dates and events are significant and how some interpret these events differently. Rather than just books some podcasts and YouTube channels I recommend are: Podcasts: American History tellers, Historical figures, The History Chicks, Hardcore History and History unplugged. Some YouTube channels I recommend are: Step Back History, Home team History, The Cynical Historian, Religion for Breakfast and Micheal Freado’s Channel. I also encourage as others have mentioned various online lectures on YouTube and documentaries on streaming channels such as Prime Video. Another important thing about the study of History in college is being familiar with foreign languages. What I did in middle school to be familiar with foreign languages was getting books from the library and practicing conjugations and grammar and practicing on Duolingo everyday which I’m thankful I did before I arrived at college. I also took 3 languages while in high school which is something I would recommend as well especially if she starts to like learning languages while in middle and high school instead of taking the same language for all four years of high school.