Need recommendations for high interest books for DS.

Well, my 10 year old son likes the Animorph series - the author’s last name is Applewhite. It says it’s for ages 9 to 12. They are really too hard for him but he likes them and they are available at the library. His teacher requires 20 minutes of reading outloud everyday - weekends and holidays included. We don’t always comply but we try to. The author doesn’t always use complete sentences and conversation includes language like way cool and buff. (Not my favorite but I’m willing to overlook it due to his interest.)

He just read Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Sachar. It took 20 to 30 minutes to read each story and they are funny.

I just found out about www.lexile.com which does help me determine reading level of books.

He loves the Harry Potter books but they are too hard so I read a paragraph and then, he reads a paragraph and that seems to be a good way to do it unless Hagrid is speaking. The accent is way too hard.

Best of luck.

Karen,
I wish I had some good suggestions. I think the best thing to do is to take him to a book store or the library and let him pick out a few books that look interesting. My son seems to like the Bionicle series. He even brought home a Scholastic book order form and asked me to order more Bionicle books! (That’s the first time he’s ever asked me to order a book that didn’t have a toy that came with it).

He doesn’t choose to read either, but there have been times in the past when I’ve said, “Hey go read a chapter in your Bionicle book,” and he’s done it!

Someone recommended the Marvin Redpost series to me. I don’t know how good they are, but they may be worth looking at.

Karen,
I am not sure what RL or grade your son is in, but take a look at:
gr 3 Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling, Wayside School by Louis Sachar
gr 4 Holes by Louis Sachar, Crash by Jerry Spinelli, Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman, Snow Treasure(fiction acct of norwegian children saving the country’s gold from the Natzis) by Marie McSwigan,
gr 4-5 Hatchet and Brian’s Winter by Gary Paulsen, Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth Speare

These are part of the public school curr. that both of my boys have enjoyed. They are all short books.

Also check out the Reading Rockets site and www.guysread.com

My son read the Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume at school this year and loved it. There are other books like Superfudge that are similar. He also liked Frindle byAndrew Clemens. It is short and the print is large, which helps my son.

If these are too difficult, we have enjoyed a lot of the historical fiction in the I Can Read Book series. This are leveled books and at the level 3 (grades 2-4) there are a number of stories my son has enjoyed. You have to look carefully because some of them are oriented to younger children. But I have “The Long Way to a New Land” about a family emigrating from Sweden to the United States sitting next to me. There are others about Buffalo Bill and a family helping slaves escape. The topics are appropriate for a 10 year old but the reading level is about RL 2.5-3. There are some other reading series that have similar type books—another one we have is on Helen Keller.

My son prefers this type of books to the more silly books like Captain Underpants….which some have said their kids love but my son hated. So it depends on your kid. ..

My son also enjoyed the Magic Tree House books. They are RL 3.

My son read Sign of the Beaver this year, which SAR suggested. The back of the book says RL 5.6 and the print is small. It was a bit of a stretch for my son but he had to read a historical fiction book and we had trouble finding one with a male main character. (He had to give a book report dressed as the character so that mattered!!)

Beth

You mean besides Super Diaper Baby and Captain Underpants??? LOL

Oh, well, they are the first things he CHOSE to read-what can I say?

The Spiderwick Chronicles
Deltora Quest series

Hes starting a Garth Nix series called “Keys to the Kingdom” which is different in that the books are very thick and look like theyre for older kids but are actually a 3rd gr level-you dont see that often

DS DEFINITELY wants the thinner books;this is almost more important than readability or content. Hes read the Unfortunate Events series which is 6th gr level(I think) They are thin and have pictures inserted so he starts them with confidence

I am impressed he chose this thick one, for a change, and am hoping it will encourage him to not be afraid of thicker books

Homeschool wise(books I chose) he enjoyed Holes the most. We are currently reading Hoot! which I suspect is a close second(Holes was easier by far;even though they use it in junior high and its content can be mature, its written at 4th gr level)

Hoot has some challenging vocab but it could always be your next read aloud ;) (know how you’re looking forward to THAT)

Thanks guys. You are the greatest!

http://www.bookadventure.com/

Is a reading incentive program. You may not want the incentive part but it has a wonderful book reccommendation area. You enter age of child, reading level and genres wanted (eg. science fiction, fantasy, etc, etc) and it spits out a list of titles. We print the list and head to the library.

The incentive part is you can take a quick quiz on each book which gets you points very similiar to the summer reading program at most public libraries. Nice if you are needing a program of incentives to build the fluency practice. We used their point system for our own incentives.

We just got back from the book store . While there ds says to me ” look mom , there’s A.T.” So I look over to see what he’s pointing to and its the movie “E.T” – guess we aren’t quite there yet…

The suggestions here are all modern; some are good but a lot are commercial and kind of junky. Try looking at some things that have stood the test of time; explore the library or used book store.

I’m not familiar with “zack files” — about how hard are they to read? Better to go too easy than too hard. What does he like about them?

Matt Christopher has written gobs of books about kids and sports (for all I know, it’s ten people writing with that name); Time Warp Trio is good, too. Then there’s a really, really cool book about eating worms… How to Eat Fried Worms… which has a chapter for each worm and is, actually, just a good story with character building and everything. I just read Flipped and really liked that, too — can’t remember the author but it’s only complicatoin is that its’ done in two voices — each chapter alternates between the boy and the girl (no, it’s not exactly a romance — more about what true friendships are, and how the “best” families aren’t always the ones that look the best… a really good story…)

Junk has its place (Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew have sorta stood the test of time… and they’re pretty junky :-))

Just read two Garth Nix — very, very thick tomes with gobs of action (fantasy books) and characters I ended up annoyed at but that’s my taste :-) Flipped was better!