My sons are dedicated soccer players and reluctant readers. Here are some titles sure to get the most disinclined youngsters flipping pages.
My 13-year-old read The Outsiders in school and absolutely raved about it. He even shared that he learned that his book is the progenitor of the young adult genre. Needless to say, I was intrigued. I had never read The Outsiders and did not recall having heard of it. I guess it wasn't quite considered a classic while I was in middle school, and I was probably too young to watch the movie based on the book.
What about this book made him claim it is the best he's ever read? As a young adult author, I thought I better read this foundational yarn.
Listening to him talk about the novel and reading it myself, it appealed to him that the book is about friendship, cliques, and tough choices. The themes of friendship and cliques engaged him the most. He can wax poetic about the friend group—dare I say, found family—in the book and the rival cliques. I picked up on those themes immediately while reading the book. There's also ample teenage angst expressed that I don't know that I would have found appealing at any age, but I know it speaks very directly to my teen's worldview.
I have to tell you, S.E. Hinton must truly be a literary genius. Somehow, as a teenager herself, she penned a story that appeals to teen boys fifty years or more after publication. If you have an unenthusiastic teen reader, especially an angsty boy, this slender classic might be the literary tonic they need to jumpstart their reading.
The Wild Robot has been an extremely popular book with both my sons. The older one has read it a half dozen times or more, although he hasn't read the other books in the series, and I suspect he feels he's too old to read them at this point (but you never know!). The younger boy and I have read the entire series and hope Mr. Brown will produce a fourth book. The series starter, The Wild Robot, is a true classic that will appeal to the young and the young at heart looking for a good story about found family and living a life of purpose. The follow-up books are quite good too.
These books are highly recommended for reluctant readers between the ages of eight and twelve. Oh, and the movie is fantastic, too.
The Ice Monster by David Walliams
This is a thoroughly enjoyable book about a street urchin who befriends and rescues a woolly mammoth from a natural history museum. The story is fast-paced, laugh-out-loud comical, and touching. My older son read this when he was eight or nine and thoroughly enjoyed it. The younger lad and I recently finished it. His dramatic readings proved that he was fully engaged in the text.
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