Reading suggestions: 10 year old boy

[bohemiancoast]

Hello chaps: this is a sort of semi-regular 'recommend books for my child' post

Comments

[cpt_buggernuts]

Has he tried the Australian author Paul Jennings? Collections of short stories, not many computers but kind of a less harsh Roald Dahl with significant little boy appeal (a boy befriends a naiad who helps him win a pissing contest, the family home is saved when a child helps his father dynamite a rotting whale and it turns out there's ambergris within, pants get microwaved and thus imbued with magical powers...)

[julia_winolj]

I found James Patterson's Maximum Ride series to be exciting and action packed (and apparently there is now a computer game...). There's also F. E. Higgins - Tales from the Sinister City, a sort of gothic "Eerie, Indiana" series of stories where the "author" introduces mysterious item he has got hold of and then reveals the gut-wrenching, tragic, adventurous story behind it. I've only read "The Eyeball Collector" - the first in the series is called "The Black Book of Secrets". Garth Nix has a series for younger readers called "The Seventh Tower" - I enjoyed the first 2 books "The Fall" and "Castle", and there was also his "Keys to the Kingdom" series starting with "Mister Monday" - of course all these are more fantasy than techno. I presume you are already aware of Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series and Charlie Higson's Young Bond series, and Philip Reeve's "Mortal Engines" series. He's possibly a bit young yet, but there are also Darren Shan's series - the vampire one beginning with "Cirque du Freak" was pretty good.
Good luck

[bohemiancoast]

Super! I think he's read at least one Alex Rider but not most of the rest of these. I've definitely seen a Garth Nix around the place but it might be M's.

[julia_winolj]

Oh - also Helen Cresswell's "The Bagthorpe Saga" is very fun eccentric Englishness - don't know if you've come across this in your youth...

[julia_winolj]

Oh and have you tried Heinlein juveniles - I remember really enjoying "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" and "Space Family Stone". The John Christopher Tripods trilogy as mentioned below and some of his other stuff was pretty good - he has just written an introduction prequel novella to the Tripods books explaining how aliens with technology not much better than our own managed to to take over our world).

[cybik]

Diana Wynne Jones (particularly The Ogre Downstairs and Archer's Goon?), Robin Jarvis, Brian Jacques?

[coalescent]

I wouldn't immediately have said that these are quite age appropriate yet, but if he's reading Little Brother ... the Patrick Ness books might be a good bet: The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask & The Answer and Monsters of Men.

[dev_iant]

I'd have to agree with your caveat there - the middle book in particular is very "bleak" - torture isn't really appropriate for a 10-year old, even these days. The presence of a love story might also deter a 10-year old boy!

Would strongly recommend them for everyone over the age of 13 or so, however.

Other than that - Ender's Game & Only You Can Save Mankind were my first two thoughts.

[bohemiancoast]

He likes the Scott Westerfeld Uglies series, which has a load of not-suitable-for-a-ten-year-old content. In general J seems to prefer stuff that's aimed at much older children, or very easy material. Little of what he reads strikes me as being obviously age-appropriate.

[flick]

I'd try and keep him away from the Ness books for a bit longer yet. They are very disturbing, and they gave me bad dreams.

[armb]

Alex Rider? (I haven't read Cherub, but I gather it's the same sort of thing. Maybe the Young James Bond series too (which I also haven't read).)

Mine are mostly reading Warhammer 40k books at the moment....

[bohemiancoast]

He's definitely been exposed to Alex Rider.