Exciting and Elementary

The editing deadline for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying is this week and the holidays are coming at me with frightening speed. I’m compiling a list of topics I want to write about when I have the time and available brain waves, and I promise that one of those will be the list of books people suggested based on last week’s post (I want to pursue a few more sources for ideas and then take some time to explore some of the suggestions).

In the meantime, I hate to leave my 9 year old boy out of this wonderful rush of book suggestions, so let’s try to compile a list for him this week. He’s been a little slower to come around to reading on his own, although he loves stories and likes being read to. He’s a capable reader when something grabs his attention, but he’s all too willing to give up after 2 pages if a book hasn’t grabbed him. He’s also picky, and it’s hard to know what he’ll like—I fail more often than I succeed in choosing books for him.

He most definitely doesn’t like to be scared—we stopped reading the Harry Potter series to him after Order of the Phoenix, which proved to be a bit too intense. He’s been devouring the Warriors series by Erin Hunter, although I hear those get a lot scarier after the first set of 6, which he’s just finished. We’ll see how that goes.

He appreciates a sense of humor in his books. He enjoys Geronimo Stilton and the Pokemon graphic novels, but he can read them in an hour and I think he needs something more challenging than that—plus that’s a pace I can’t keep adequately supplied.

I’m also not exaggerating in the slightest when I say a book gets 2 pages to draw him in—I’ve seen him toss a book aside in frustration if he doesn’t get it immediately. (Those usually end up on the “We’ll read those together at some point” pile.)

His interests are diverse—I think his preferences are less about topic and more about how engaging the book is right off the bat. I know there are a lot of fantastic books out there that require a little investment from the reader—he’ll get to those eventually. But for now, does anyone have suggestions of books for a 9 year old boy (4th grade) that aren’t too scary and that are awesome quite literally from page 1?

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