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Books for Boys

Most avid readers have experienced that one book that kick-started their love of reading. For me, it was having my mom and dad read Inkheart aloud to my siblings and I. From there, I dove into Nancy Drew and The Boxcar Children (I am not proud). I read The Sisters Grimm and Gail Carson Levine. By the age of nine or ten, I was off. My sisters had similar experiences; you struggle for a while, then something clicks, and suddenly there just aren’t enough books lying around.


Perhaps you’ve been blessed with a son/brother/sad-nephew-living-in-the-cupboard-under-the-stairs/charge who loved reading from a young age. More likely, they've had to experience the right book to get them really excited about reading. It’s pretty typical of both boys and girls, but getting a little boy to sit down and pick up a book can be challenging, to say the least. This is why it’s absolutely silly to hand an 8-year-old The Wizard of Oz and The Phantom Tollbooth and then get frustrated when they don’t seem interested in reading. You don’t give a kid The Old Man and the Sea and expect them to get excited; kids don’t want to read that. I don’t want to read that. The point is, kids have to have fun reading before they can dive into the deeper stuff. Example: When our little brother was about eight, reading was a chore. He just never got into The Magic Treehouse books like we did, so we bought him the The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger. And he loved it. One day he couldn’t find the book, so I handed him Gregor the Overlander to read in the meantime. He never went back to Angleberger, after that. By the time he’d finished the Underland Chronicles, he was an avid reader. Now he’s ten and he’s reading The Mysterious Benedict Society and Harry Potter.


(Update: he's 13 now, and has blown through the entirety of the Lord of the Rings series, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the Inheritance Cycle, Ender's Shadow, and he's read Ender's Game three times.) We know it can be tough to come up with books that will get a little boy excited about reading. But the past few years, we’ve also had a lot of experience scrounging for new material for our brother and his friends. Which is why (drum roll) we have created a list of the top books we think will make little boys readers for life! The titles with links lead to detailed reviews and summaries of the novels. ~ 6+

~ 8+

~ 10+

~ 11+

~ 13+

~ 14+

~ 16+

As a reminder: we’re serious about the “plus” in the age categories. I would hand Fortunately, the Milk to a 13-year-old. I would give Gregor the Overlander or The Thief Lord to a 16-year-old. We seriously recommend these books for boys AND girls!


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