My early reading tended more to Fantasy and Sci-fi, so that is what I am going to recommend.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is great for a bright kid at that age or maybe Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Stephen Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle is a retelling of the Authurian legends with a strong historical feel threaded through it and might be something she would enjoy.
I think a great book (probably not for the holidays though, given the subject matter) would be the Diary of Anne Frank. I read it when I was that age. It was deeply moving.
The Hobbitt Series was a fun read.
My nine year old is reading “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and loving it. She hated “Little Women” and dragged through it.
For fun, she was reading the Beacon Street Girls. They are written for Tweens. They are very much candyfloss, but they were cute and not objectionable.
I would suggest what my 12-year-old is reading, but I’m not sure how much your daughter likes Glenn Beck or Ann Coulter.
“Arguing with Idiots” is hilarious.
Fiction: Watership Down by Richard Adams
Non-fiction: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
The Corpse Had a Familar Face by Edna Buchanan
I especially recommend Edna Buchanan’s books. She used to be the crime reporter for the Miami Herald before she quit to write novels. She writes some of the best prose I’ve ever read, and says more in a few paragraphs than most writers say in a dozen pages.
Also: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
“The Velvet Room” by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. It’s a wonderful story and extremely well-written.
True Grit by Charles Portis
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
The Golden Ocean by Patrick O’Brien
Beowulf trans. by Seamus Heaney
Podkayne of Mars by Robert Heinlein
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
some stories by Tolstoy
“Prude” by Carol Platt Liebau.
‘How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls’
You read it first!
Then decide how long you can afford to wait to have her read it.
Enemy Women. A gripping story about women imprisoned during the Civil War. No sex, little violence. But strong.
Yes, "Diary of Ann Frank" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" are good books. But not for Christmas.
Birthday Snow, by Monique Niemaszyk
Spring’s Gift of Hope, also by Monique Niemaszyk
and two by Carmen Marcoux:
Arms of Love
Surrender
Ender’s Game. Awesome. Maybe not if she’s really girlie though.
Two SciFi multiple volume epics come to mind both with very strong female leads; Anne McCaffery’s “Dragonriders of Pern” series and Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children / “Clan of the Cave Bear” series. The latter may be a bit to sexually explicit for that age (I don’t have any 12-13 females to ask about it) but its depiction of the Ice Age and primitive Eurasia still resonates with me.
I remember still reading Dickens when I was a kid. Oliver Twist — I still remember Chapter 1: I Am Born. Tried to read all the classics & set my own reading lists. But still remember clutching my Oliver Twist on the (city) bus to school at about that age.
Anything by Jane Austen. Also, the Anne of Green Gables series. I remember being fascinated by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I at that age. Gone With The Wind and The Secret Garden.
Couple of suggestions:
History (real people):
Real Men: Ten Courageous Americans to Know and Admire - You can get it at Amazon
High Fantasy (probably my all time favorite book (both my grown daughters also from the time they were early teens):
The Deed of Paksenarrion: A Novel - also at Amazon
Hope she likes these.
Have a great Christmas!
The Little Britches series (8 books) by Ralph Moody. Autobiography/recollections of growing up in Colorado (& elsewhere) in the early 1900’s. Great, wholesome, honorable tales of survival and family values during rough times. Lots of horse & outdoor stuff. I loved them when I was 10 and read and enjoyed them again in my 50’s.
Digging into the memory banks here for what I was reading at that age. I think my favorites way back then were Christy by Catherine Marshall and Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. Jamaica Inn by Du Maurier was also a favorite.