Like Little House on the Prairie — but for the multi-sensory descriptions not the pioneer life

I am looking for further bedtime reading for an autistic early elementary school kid. I started with The Little House in the Big Woods and he is really connecting to it, but I don’t think it is really the setting so much as the descriptions. Apologies in advance for a bit of a weird request that is hard to get across without writing a novel of my own.

Its the way Wilder goes into great detail outlining every step of some mundane task, like smoking meat for the winter or churning butter, not just what it looks like, but equally vivid descriptions of what everything tastes and smells and sounds and feels like.

(If you read these books as a kid, I bet that’s a big part of why you can still remember specific parts umpteen years later and you know what I’m talking about).

THIS is what I need more of, not necessarily more pioneer and homesteading tales, which is what I see when I search for books similar to little house on the prairie. I think it could be stories about anybody and take place anywhere in the world (or in an imaginary world) or any time, past, present or future.

For example, I tried Roald Dahl’s The BFG, one of his dad’s childhood favorites, where the appeal is more in clever wordplay and silliness and it just went right over his head, he did not care. But he was hypnotized by the butter churning.

As another example, he also really likes Kipling’s Rikki Tikki Tavi. (I know, I’m hitting all of the problematic classics). Is he a kid who is really interested in animals? (Or colonialism? Haha) Not really! But the language, again, is so detailed and poetic — the mongooses tail stiffening like a bottle brush, the sound of the cobras tail rustling on the floor like dry leaves — it really captivates him.

In summary, books that appeal to a sensory seeking autistic kid. Concrete and functional descriptions — how things are made and work — but language that is lush and poetic and uses all five senses.

I am reading to him, so it can be a bit above his grade level. I’d like to stick with nominally children’s literature and chapter books.

If this makes sense to anyone, I’d love some suggestions!

by spartacus_agador