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As I responded to another thread, I realized again that my boys just haven't read like they have in other years. Their book lists are much shorter. That said, TOG reading is a lot. But basically they have just reread things they read earlier for their fun reading. Part of it is because I am starting to have trouble finding new, worthwhile things for them to read. My 7th grader did read James Herriot for the first time, but basically reread Lord of the Rings, Shara's Civil war books and all the other ones he's ever read when we were studying it because he loves it so much, and right now the Left Behind series. Yes, I know all of the high school reading lists for English, but I'm talking fun stuff not serious, heavy stuff. What do offer for fun??

 

Christine

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My daughter basically went from young kids' chapter books to adult novels. She's reading all of Terry Pratchett at the moment. She also loves P.G. Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, some Bill Bryson (she especially loved The Thunderbolt Kid, the only memoir she's ever adored). She also is completely fascinated with the articles in Muse magazine. They're usually written by current science or history authors, summaries or pieces of recently published works, but offbeat enough to appeal to most kids.

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I can't think of any recommendations for "fun books" as my kids like pretty heavy reading, that others might not find fun, but I can recommend a tip that I got here last yr that really sparked their interest for reading.

 

I got a book basket for summer reading. We went to Books a Million, picked out about 3 books a piece and put them in the basket for summer reading. They read and evjoyed almost all of them. Most of the books came off the recommended school reading shelf at BAM.

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We have NOT read all of these -- I pulled many titles from lists from past threads on the topic of books for boys. :)

 

Older DS especially enjoys mysteries for fun reading, and also enjoys Popular Mechanics magazine and MacWorld magazine. Younger DS enjoys fantasies and real life/animal books, as well as Brick Journal (quarterly magazine for teen and adult Lego enthusiastics). Both really enjoyed comic collections, too: Calvin & Hobbes; Pearls Before Swine; Dilbert; Get Fuzzy; Zits. Also, DH's collection of late '60s/EARLY '70s Mad magazines -- before they got crude and so extremely liberal.

 

Below is a list of ideas for you for that "tween" age -- books at a middle school, high school AND adult levels -- because at that age our boys still enjoyed middle school books just for fun. BEST of luck in finding some books that work for your DS! Warmly, Lori D.

 

 

DETECTIVE/MYSTERY

 

middle school

- The Westing Game (Raskin)

- The Baker Street Irregulars (Newman) -- also, others by Newman about these characters

- Samurai mystery series (Hoobler)

- Ides of April; Beyond the Desert Gate (Ray)

- mini-mystery collections (by Sobol, Conrad, Sukach, Weber, Obriel, etc.)

 

high school/adult

- Amazing Mrs. Pollifax series (Gilman)

- Cadfael series (Peters)

- No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series (Smith)

- The Cat Who... series (Braun)

- Sherlock Holmes mysteries (Doyle)

- Murder on the Orient Express (Christie)

- Father Brown mysteries (Chesterton)

 

 

FANTASY

 

middle school

- Phantom Tollbooth (Juster)

- The Neverending Story (Ende)

- Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (O'Brien)

- Percy Jackson series (Riordon)

- Artemis Fowl series (Colfer)

- Bromeliad Trilogy: Truckers, Diggers, Wings (Pratchett)

 

high school

- Watership Down (Adams)

- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass (Carroll) -- the annotated version by Martin Gardiner, which points out all the puns, satires, riddles, mathematical puzzles, etc.

- The Hobbit; Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)

- Farmer Giles of Ham; Smith of Wooten Major; Leaf by Niggle (Tolkien)

- Eragon, Eldest, Brisinger (Paolli)

 

 

SCI-FI

 

middle school

- Enchantress from the Stars (Engdahl)

 

high school/adult

- House of Stairs (Sleator) -- perhaps preview; behavior modification applied to 5 teens

- I, Robot (Asimov)

- Foundation (Asimov)

- Martian Chronicles (Bradbury)

- R is for Rocket (Bradbury)

- Star Soldiers (Norton)

- Ender's Game (Card) -- perhaps preview

- Dune (Herbert) -- perhaps preview

- Out of the Silent Planet (Lewis)

 

 

ANIMAL ADVENTURE

 

middle school

- The Incredible Journey (Burnford)

- Where the Red Fern Grows (Rawls)

- Summer of the Monkeys (Rawls)

- The Great Brain series (Fitzgerald)

- The Black Stallion; The Black Stallion Returns; Island Stallion (Farley)

 

 

ADVENTURE

 

middle school

- Wolves of Willoughby Chase (Aiken)

- The Great and Terrible Quest (Lovett)

- Ranger Apprentice series (Flanagan)

- Twenty-One Balloons (Dubois)

 

high school/adult

- The Scarlet Pimpernel (Orczy)

- His Majesty's Dragon series -- Napoleonic Wars with Britain with ships, soldiers AND with dragon-riding squadrons -- mild sexuality and language)

- The Sword in the Stone (White) -- first of 4 novellas about king Arthur; the full book is "The Once and Future King" -- preview, as the other 3 novels DO cover the Lancelot/Guinevere affair

- Something Wicked This Way Comes (Bradbury) -- a bit of a supernatural thriller; well written!

 

 

CLASSIC ADVENTURE

- Ben Hur (Wallace)

- Prisoner of Zenda (Hope)

- Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas)

- The Three Musketeers (Dumas)

- Ivanhoe (Scott)

- Seawolf (London)

- Around the World in 80 Days (Verne)

- The Time Machine; War of the Worlds (Wells)

- Treasure Island (Stevenson)

 

 

SEA-FARING ADVENTURE

- Cleared for Action (Meader)

- Midshipman Bolitho series (Kent)

- Horatio Hornblower series (Forester)

- Master and Commander (O'Brian)

- Midshipman Quinn series (Styles)

- Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage (Lansing) -- true story

- Kon Tiki (Heyerhahl) -- true story

- The Hungry Ocean; The Lobster Chronicles (Greenlaw)

- Captain Blood (Sabatini) -- true story

- Dove (Graham) -- true story

 

 

 

REAL LIFE

 

middle school

- True Stories series (Dowswell) -- short exciting real life incidents involving, WW1, WW2, survival, spies, etc.

- Maniac MacGee (Spinnelli) -- an unusual homesless boy who literally unties the "Gideon's Knot" of racial in a small town

- The Pushcart War (Merrill) -- humorous satire on how wars start

- The Day They Came to Arrest the Book (Hentoff) -- Huckleberry Finn and censorship in a small town high school

- The Cay (Taylor) -- surviving shipwreck on an island

- Island of the Blue Dolphins (O'Dell) - Native American girl survives alone for years on an island

- The King's Fifth (O'Dell) -- exploration, gold and greed of conquistadors in the New World

 

high school/adult

- Escape From Colditz (Reid) -- WW2 British POWs in a German camp; true story

- Guns of Navarone; Where Eagles Dare (MacLean) -- WW2 adventure tales

- Up Periscope (White) -- based on true WW2 events

- The Forgotten 500 (Freeman) -- WW2 Allies trapped behind enemy lines; true story

- The Hiding Place (tenBoom) -- WW2 Christian sisters hiding Jews; true story

- God's Smuggler (Andrew) -- smuggling Bibles into Eastern European communist countries during the cold war; true story

- Bruchko -- missionary to South American tribes in 1960s-70s; true story

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My boys have enjoyed:

 

*the other Tolkien books (Silmurillion, Children of Hurin and others)

*Horatio Hornblower series (over and over again)

*Louie L'amour books

*Ender's Game (though I do think there is a bit of language there, ds2 was introduced to this series in a lit class and ate it up.

 

Lisa

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