My son is in 6th grade and is struggling to find a book he enjoys. Reading isn’t his favorite activity and he views it as a chore. I’m a huge reader and have tried everything to encourage his reading including, reading our own books in the same room, reading aloud to each other from a shared book, reading separately and then having a book club discussion. He enjoys when it’s something we do together but it’s not always practical.
He doesn’t like anything “scary” or too sad but a mystery is ok. He likes sports. He really enjoyed:
The Giver
Becoming Muhammad Ali
Crenshaw
Kate D’Amelio books
Any suggestions???
by lokipuddin
9 Comments
Consider The Reckoners Series by Brandon Sanderson. It starts with Steelheart and its a multibook series with a novella in there. It’s about superheroes who are driven to do evil with their powers. [Steelheart](https://www.brandonsanderson.com/pages/the-reckoners-series)
My sister used to teach 6th grade and always had her class read The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. It’s an oldie, but it definitely holds up!
Crossover (and series) by Kwame Alexander!!!!
Has he read [Holes](https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/788d1226-c544-4959-9556-25c66fa79196) by Louis Sachar?
The Wind Singer!
Hatchet – Gary Paulsen.
The Track series by Jason Reynolds is great. The books are short and the stories are really good. Each book is about a different child on the same athletic team, so there are crossovers and through lines between the books.
The Rhythm of Time by Questlove and SA Cosby. This is an excellent story about a tween who accidentally time travels back to when his parents were his age.
Offbeat suggestion:
My son hated reading as a child, but today is a huge reader.
What turned him around was strategy guides to video games. Not literature by any stretch, but something he cared about enough to read closely. It made reading valuable and enjoyable for him.
Does he like fantasy at all? Because my standard recommendations for that age group would be:
Tamora Pierce: The Song of the Lioness series (and all the other Tortallan books)
Terry Pratchett: The Wee Free Men and the rest of the Tiffany Aching series
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit
Susan Cooper: The Dark Is Rising series
And maybe the Percy Jackson books, when he’s a little older.
What got me into historical novels as a kid was when my parents read Rosemary Sutcliff to us – she wrote an amazing and well-researched series that covers the entire English history in snapshots throughout the different historical periods, following the same family, starting with the Roman occupation in The Eagle of the Nineth. The latest one we read was set during the English Civil War – she may have added to the series since then. I really loved them as a kid.