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Book recommendations for upper logic stage boys?


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What are your 7th-8th grade boys reading? I'm fishing for ideas for Christmas for my oldest ds. :001_smile:

 

DS is a big Tolkien fan, likes mythology, medieval times, and sci-fi, but will read a wide variety if it looks interesting enough. He's currently reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy again, and before that he read Divergent and Insurgent. ("That was like Hunger Games actually grew up.")

 

He's asked for Hobbitus Ille and one on Elvish languages, and I have The Art of the Hobbit and the rest of the Imaginarium Geographica series on my list.

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Sci Fi

The Time Machine, Wells

War of the Worlds, Wells

The Invisible Man, Wells

Martian Chronicles, Burroughs

ALL books by Verne (my son loves these)

Crysalids and Day of the Trifids, Wiindham

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Vol 1

Lensman x7

 

Fantasy

Sword in the Stone and sequels

 

Medieval Times

The Black Arrow

Ivanhoe

There are a lot by Rosmary Sutcliff

 

Mystery

Sherlock Holmes

Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

 

Adventure

Tom Sawyer

Huck Fin

Gift of the Magi and others by O Henry

 

HTH

 

Ruth in NZ

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Has he read the Ranger's Apprentice series? That and The Immortal Secrets of Nicholas Flamel have been DS's favorite series so far. He's getting the first three books of The Brotherband Chronicles (new series by the author of Ranger's Apprentice) for Christmas. Anything by Lloyd Alexander or Terry Pratchett is great, too.

 

Jackie

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Ideas for book titles based on the interests you listed of your DS:

 

More Tolkien

- Annotated The Hobbit (Anderson) -- wonderful, rich annotations make this very worthwhile

- Farmer Giles of Ham (very humorous short story)

- Children of Hurin (a tragic epic of First Age of Middle Earth -- more serious, like a cross between a tragic ancient Greek epic and Beowulf)

- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight -- Tolkien's translation of this tale of a knight of King Arthur's court, written in medieval times

 

Fantasy

- Eragon series (Paollini) -- first book feels derivative of Lord of the Rings, but eventually develops its own voice

- The Never-Ending Story (Ende) -- amazingly creative

 

Medieval

- Redwall series (Jacques) -- talking animals

- Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village (Schlitz)

- Crispin: Cross of Lead (Avi)

- The Sword and the Circle: King Arthur & the Knights of the Round Table (Sutcliff) -- and sequels

- Black Horses for the King (McCaffrey) -- King Arthur

- The Canterbury Tales (McCaughrean) -- adaptation of some of the tales

- A String in the Harp (Bond)

- Fighting Prince of Donegal (Reilly) -- swashbuckling adventure/historical fiction

 

Medieval AND Mystery

- Brother Cadfael series (Peters) -- 12th century monk solves a murder mystery per novel; written for adults, but any mature subjects are handled with skill and subtly, making these okay for young teens

 

Mythology

- Percy Jackson Olympian series (Riordan) -- a lot of humor; ancient Greek mythology characters

- Black Ships Before Troy; Wanderings of Odysseus (Sutcliff) -- retelling of Iliad and Odyssey

- In Search of a Homeland: The Aeneid (Lively) -- retelling of Aeneid

- Quicksilver (Spinner) -- short story collection of Greek mythology, based around the god Mercury

- Sea of Trolls (Farmer) -- Norse-based mythology

 

Sci-Fi

- Bromeliad Trilogy: Truckers, Diggers, Wings (Pratchett) -- light, fun, very slightly irreverent (Pratchett can have crudities, but this trilogy is clean and fun)

- Enchantress from the Stars (Engdahl) -- sci-fi AND fantasy in one

- I Robot (Asimov) -- classic 1950s sci-fi

- R is for Rocket (Bradbury) -- classic Bradbury short stories

- The Time Machine (Wells)

- War of the Worlds (Wells) -- then have fun with the fast popcorn read of The Tripod Trilogy (Christopher)

- The Giver (Lowry) -- dystopian work

- Tale of Time City (Jones)

 

Detective

- Sherlock Holmes mystery short stories

- Hercule Poirot's Casebook (Christie) -- short story collection

- Murder on the Orient Express (Christie)

- And Then There Were None (Christie)

- Father Brown mystery short stories (Chesterton)

- The Westing Game (Raskin)

- Robert Newman series: Case of the... Baker Street Irregulars; Threatened King; Vanishing Corpse; Somerville Secret

- Samurai mystery series (Hoobler)

- Detectives in Togas; Roman Ransom (Winterfeld)

 

Detective Mini-Mystery Collections

- Historical Whodunits (Conrad) -- and others by Conrad

- Classic Whodunits (Bullimore, Conrad, Niederman, Smith) -- collection

- 5 Minute Mysteries (Weber) -- and sequels

- Two Minute Mysteries (Sobol) -- and sequels

- You Be the Jury (Miller)

- Solv-a-Crime Puzzles (Singer)

- Dr. Quicksolve mini-mystery series (Sukach)

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I was lucky enough to get to hear Martin Cothran talk last spring about great books, at the end of his talk he got side tracked into good books for avid readers. He suggested Louis L'amour books. DS has read 2 and is loving them. He also suggested Penrod. DS flew through that one as well.

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If you didn't get enough suggestions, I thought I'd add some YA titles since not too many were mentioned...

 

I think if he liked Insurgent, he might like The Maze Runner. Most of the rest of these new dystopians are a bit too girly to recommend to a boy, but I'm assuming he's already read The Hunger Games? And there are older dystopian futures - Ender's Game, The Giver, etc. which are good. Ender's is especially good for boys. There's also Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series, which is also really good.

 

In fantasy YA, The False Prince was surprisingly good. The narrator was interesting. And The Thief is excellent, excellent. If he hasn't read that, it's really good. And, of course, Ranger's Apprentice, which already was recommended.

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