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Book recommendation for teen boy who loves LOTR and Ivanhoe?


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Other Works By Tolkien:

- Farmer Giles of Ham; Smith of Wooten Major; Leaf by Niggle -- short stories

- Children of Hurin -- epic, reminiscent of Beowulf crossed with The Iliad

 

 

Medieval and/or Fantasy with Medieval-Type Setting:

- Cadfael series (Peters) -- 12th century monk solves mysteries against backdrop of England's political upheaval

- The Sword in the Stone (White) -- King Arthur as a lad under Merlin's tutoring

(first of set of 4 works by White; the entire set is the longer novel "The Once and Future King" -- while handled pretty non-graphically, it does have the Lancelot/Guinevere affair, some witchcraft, and the general low morals of the courtiers -- though, that is what Arthur was trying to fight against)

- The Great and Terrible Quest (Lovett) -- wonderful, medieval adventure

- Auralia's Colors; Cyndere's Midnight (Overstreet) -- first 2 of a fantasy "quadrilogy"

- The Last Unicorn (Beagle) -- I read this MANY years ago, so I can't remember if there's anything objectionable in it

 

 

Other Good Adventure Literature

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

- Eagle of the Ninth (and others by Rosemary Sutcliff)

 

 

Other Great Adventure Classics

- The Odyssey (Homer) -- for a great prose version, try the Barnes & Noble version by Samuel Butler

- Ben Hur (Wallace) -- set in ancient Rome

- The Sagas of Icelanders (Kellogg) -- OR -- Hrafnkel's Saga and Other Icelandic Stories (Palsson) -- Tolkien was greatly influenced by these sagas

- Beowulf -- a hero, a monster, a monster's mother, a dragon...

- The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas) -- set in 1700s France

 

 

Complete fluff, but fun adventure

- Percy Jackson and the Olympian series (Riordan) -- modern teen demi-gods on quests

- Artemis Fowl series (Colfer) -- 12yo evil mastermind vs. characters from Faerie

- His Majesty's Dragon series (Novic) -- Napoleonic Wars and naval battles BUT also with dragons & dragonriders

- Midshipman Quinn series

 

 

Non Fiction Gripping Adventure

- Escape From Colditz (Reid) -- WW2 British soldiers attempt to escape an unescapable German POW camp

- Kon Tiki (Heyerdahl) -- 6 men recreate a log raft trip from S. America to the S. Pacific Islands

- Brutchko (Olson) -- 19yo missionary to savage S. American stone age tribe

Edited by Lori D.
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The Eragon series (Eragon, Eldest, & Brisingr) has many of the same elements of LOTR (large quest, set in a mythical world, etc.) as well as pulling names, themes, & places from numerous folklore legends. It was written by a teenage boy too. :)

 

Don't watch the movie though. It was terrible and gives a bad name to the book, imho.

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20,000 leagues under the sea (and other Jules Verne); Tarzan of the Apes; King Solomon's Mines; Treasure Island; Kidnapped; Coral Island; The Lost World (Conan Doyle); The Three Musketeers.

 

You might want to have a general chat to him in advance about dated attitudes to 'dastardly foreigners' before he reads them though.

 

Laura

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One more question... what would you consider absolute prerequsite reading for Beowulf?

 

Also, searching the boards I also came across the suggestions of Captain Blood and Quo Vadis. Should those be on the list as well?

 

Thanks so much, guys. I knew I could count on you! I love my WTM boardies :)

Robin

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