Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources More book recommendations, please...

Sorry to be asking this oft-asked question - but I have a fairly picky reader here.
DS8 is reading around 5-6 gr. level at least.

He will need to read 20 minutes a night this school year, so we will need lots of books which pique his interest.

Currently his interest is in books with no words, or very very few. Ex: Tribal Warfare (a graphic novel about dinosaurs, who of course did not speak english anyway). They went to the library at school and he picked out a book called 'robot dreams', very minimal words and some I Spy books. These are cool books, but I am pretty sure the assignment to read includes reading 'words'.

Here's what we did last night - went through almost all the various bookshelves, me suggesting, him rejecting almost everything: magician's nephew, books on space, books on chipmunks, velveteen rabbit, magic tree house, eragon, rocket boys, time warp trio, etc.
We finally landed on a book which his DGran gave him a while back - the story of Beowulf retold, with gorgeous and somewhat scary illustrations. I think it was published about when that movie came out.
I know he mentioned liking a book on Greek myths last year, so I am leaning towards looking into more of this type.
Any suggestions in that vein, or other veins which might suit would be greatly appreciated!!

Percy Jackson and the Olympians series are easy chapter books which heavily incorporate Greek mythology into a present day story. The first one is called The Lightning Thief.

I like to use the Renaissance Learning website to look up books. Using this link you can find books in the level you desire. And generally, the lower the number of AR points, the fewer words/pages there are.
I think younger children get overwhelmed with longer books when they are moving up quickly on their reading ability. They'll easily go through 10 books with 50 pages each, but won't even attempt 1 book with 500 pages.

The goal is sounds like figuring out how to make reading fun. The books that I have seen move several kids from reading-because-they-have-to and reading-because-they-cannot-put-the-book-down are Captain Underpants. Heck the first night one came into the house, dinner was late because I couldn't put it down. They are very clever and different than most anything else available. If you haven't tried them, they are worth a shot.

The books that really caught DS's attention, the ones, he couldn't put down as an early reader were the Bunnicula series about a vampire rabbit that sucks the juice out of all the vegetables in the house.

Acs is absolutely right! Captain Underpants. My kids have also loved the Percy Jackson series (but there are lots of words). I highly recommend the Myth-O-Mania series (now 8 books) by Kate McMullan. I just looked them up on Amazon & Barnes/Noble and I can't believe they're out of print! Little paperback books sell used for $33 to >$100! My kids Loved these, they were easy (still 9-12 age group) and fun. See if your library has them or can request.

Also, kids have a hard time resisting Roald Dahl books (reward with the movie "Matilda" after the book--Great movie--ooh needs to be added to the movie list about gifted kids!) My DS7 and I are reading Andrew Clements books now. They're always good.

One thing I found with having young advanced readers was that while they were able to read/comprehend at high level, the high level books may not have held their interest, or may be too long to keep their interest (so by the time they'd finish and AR test, they wouldn't remember a lot of the details). I tried to help them by reading a chapter to them, then they'd read the next chapter, and so on. This would make it go faster (they could test more promptly and not forget). It also gave them incentive to read because I couldn't read the next chapter till they had finished theirs and they could recap theirs to me verbally which helped retain what they had read.

I only stopped reading to them at about age 9 (so I'm savoring my reading time with DS7).

Does he like the DK one subject encyclopedias? DS loved that shelf at the library, particularly one about religion all over the world.

There are picture books with lots of words, like the Dinotopia series, you might try.

There are also comics you might try to get him hooked on - Calvin and Hobbs, Peanuts. My son is currently enjoying the web comic 'KXCD' i think it's called.

Have you tried the Encyclopedia Brown series? I ate those books up as a kid, and I was the type of kid who mainly read comic books.

I will add, in favor of comic and other "non-serious" types of books, that two independent testers placed me as reading at a 10th grade level when I was 9, so I must have been getting something out of all those Uncle Scrooge stories.

Does your son like science? My eldest loves to read science encyclopedias for kids. Also, what about magazines such as Ranger Rick, etc.?

I think that the length of a chapter book can be off-putting to some kids, especially if they aren't used to reading them. Books with discrete, bite-sized pieces can be the start of a good pathway into reading longer things.

Val

We love Encyclopedia Brown around here too - each "case" is about 10 pages. I don't know if these exist anymore or not, but when I was a kid i loved Choose Your Own Adventure books - at the end of each section, you'd get to pick what your character would do, and the story would be different for each choice.

We're also getting into Ramona and Henry Huggins.

we found "choose your own adventure" books at our local library. I think they've been updated, they look pretty new.

I just got the catalog from Great Potential Press (nice place)

www.giftedbooks.com

and they list what looks like a nice resource called "Some of My Best Friends are Books: Guiding Gifted readers from Preschool to High School" by Judith Wynn Halsted. Haven't actually seen it yet, but the description is interesting.

The Melvin Beederman books by Greg Trine are good. He's a superhero with a sidekick and the books are pretty funny. He might like them because they are fun to read.

DD just finished the "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" (10). She loved it. A large section of the book is depicted/told via wonderful charcoal illustrations (maybe 1/3 to 1/2). One note, there is a "Oliver Twist" take on the main character (orphaned, homeless and resorts stealing). If you think your son won't be disturbed by the plot; I would put on your list to check out. It was a huge hit this summer for my family.

http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Hugo-Cabret-Brian-Selznick/dp/0439813786

Geronimo Stilton - The text is visually interesting and the stories are entertaining.

Thanks everyone, these suggestions look great - I am especially excited about the stephen hawking book, I had no idea he was writing for kids, that is very cool. I described that one to ds and he sounded pretty into it.
And myth-o-mania seems up his alley as well - I am making a nice list for the library!

We have definitely checked out Captain Underpants - They are one of ds's favs! And he has been literally sleeping with various Calvin compilations for the last year or so. I think he could live on comic strips alone, but I really want him to read things with a beginning middle and end, but maybe that's silly at this stage.
I will ask the teacher what she thinks is best or desired for the assignment, too.

Val, I am not at all familiar with Uncle Scrooge, I will google that one for sure....
thanks again everyone!!

More awesome ideas while I was posting and cooking dinner!
Yay! He read a couple of the G. Stiltons, but for some reason he didn't fall in love - you are right, the fonts themselves are pretty varied and interesting so it seemed like it would be a winner for him! (??)

Thanks to all for the websites as well, I am checking those out now -

I think at this age a lot is about reading being fun. I think it is OK to ask him to stretch a bit, but you don't want him to feel that reading is just a chore. I can't remember if he has visual issues. If he has a preference for bigger print and lots of pictures, it may be that it is hard for him to see/track the smaller print.

No visual issues that we know of, just odd tastes at this point, but perhaps there is something up with that. I have only had one complete eye exam for him (regular opt. exam) about a year ago.

He did read and re-read both of the wimpy kid books, but they definitely have tons of pictures. I think everyone is right about breaking up the text into smaller bits.
He also really liked a collection of poems called 'It's raining pigs and noodles', again, lots of pictures!

Uncle Scrooge is an extremely wealthy, extremely miserly duck from Disney. He's Donald Duck's uncle.

His extreme wealth often leads Donald and his three nephews (Huey, Dewey, and Louie) off on great world (or outer space) adventures. The adults usually get the group into trouble, sometimes/often because Scrooge makes a bad decision due to his miserliness. The three nephews are the clever ones in the family, and typically have to save the two grown-ups from their own boneheadedness. You can probably see why these comics appeal to kids.

Side characters include Magica de Spell, a magic sorceress who's after Scrooge's cherished "first dime" and the Beagle Boys, a band of criminals who always dream up cunning plans to steal his fortune.

I've always favored the stories by Carl Barks, who's now seen as a genius in his area. He was able to write on two levels: one that appealed to adults, and one that appealed to kids. His stories were full of caricatures. I will admit that I still read this stuff occasionally.

Don Rosa was another brilliant Donald/Scrooge author.

They're available in editions by a company called Gladstone. Gladstone was, I think, the first publisher to start identifying Carl Barks & Don Rosa/publishing their stories in dedicated volumes.

Val

Google Scrooge McDuck.

DS8 just read a book that he could not put down. It is one of the first times that I have heard peels of laughter and cackles of evil joy coming from his room as he read. I can't say that I have read it yet, because as soon as my son finished it, my DH snatched to book up. So I am recommending a book sight unseen, which makes me a little bit nervous... but here goes:

Simon Bloom, The Gravity Keeper by Michael Reisman

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0525479228/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

It is for any young boy who loves science... particularly physics!! DS excitedly jabbered on and on about how one of the good characters would use gravity to bend space in order to get out of trouble or stop the evil character from doing something dastardly. Another time the hero (an 11-year-old boy) manipulated the space/time continuum to send the evil adult villain back in time so that she became a harmless little girl.

I don't know what reading level it is? 5th through 7th maybe? It has almost 300 pages in it, and DS soared through it solo in about 3 days. I'll try to read it this week sometime and report back.

Also, DS went through a period of time where he was uninterested in books, around age 7.5 I believe. I had become nervous that there was a mismatch between his reading level and some of the content that he was being exposed to. So I was trying to bring home books from the library that I thought were *safe* for him to read. I realized, after a few weeks of this, that he was turning his nose up to books that held no interest to him, probably because they were safe. He started reading a series of books called, Star Wars Galaxy of Fear, which I do not recommend. They are very, very scary books. But that is what he wanted to read. So I opened the floodgates a little, and allowed him to read more emotionally challenging books, such as Harry Potter, well the first four books at least. All of a sudden, he could not put books down again. I can't remember all of the books that he read this summer, but he was particularly fond of the Guardian of Ga'Hoole books. He read the first 11 books of the series in 11 days (one day per book), and is waiting impatiently for book 12 from the library. I really thought that the Guardian books would have been too much for him. There are young owls who have been kidnapped from their families and vampire bats who feed off of the young owls, draining them emotionally, and somehow make them unable to fly away free and return home. But somehow he wants to process these strong emotions through the safety of a book. Is this a good thing? I don't know? The gifted psychologist that we saw over the summer seemed to think that it was great, and showed emotional maturity. She seemed to feel that books were how we learned to deal with strong emotions from a removed standpoint, a kind of a safety net, so to speak. It makes me very nervous, so I'm not advocating it in any way!

I don't know if that helps or applies to your DS at all, but I thought that I would throw it out there.

I did try to ask how scary the Gravity Keeper was, by the way, before recommending it. He said that it wasn't violent and I don't think anyone got hurt in it. One of the good characters in the book had an accident, according to my son, and it was a cliffhanger for part of the book to see if he was okay or not. Just to let you know.

ebeth - The Gravity Keeper sounds GREAT for DS! I just added it to my Amazon cart. I tried to combine it w/ an open order I placed YESTERDAY and AMazon said the 2 orders are coming from different centers so I can't combine them. Darn it lol.

Do you have any other recommendation I should add to my cart to get Super Saving Shipping?

Cackling out of control...

For the life of me I cannot recall a series of books I read when I was 7 about a group of kids in a small town who use science to get into some wild, hilarious adventures - a sort of johnny quest meets Huck Finn.

One story has them building a flying saucer out of balsa and fabric that goes out of control and terrorizes the town. It was so funny I laughed so hard that I threw up.


--

But I do recall reading this series when I was 9 and liked it. In the 5th grade our teacher started reading it to us - and I had already read it - so she let me read it aloud. I remember waking up one night during a storm and looking outside and seeing a water tower in the rain shafts and lightening and thought it was a Tripod!!!!

If they can handle Harry Potter, then they will like and be able to deal with this. There are a few scenes where major characters sacrifice themselves for their friends and I do remember crying over this.

I have not read the book put out in 1988, but the others are good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tripods

Austin - is it the Mad Scientist Club?

My DS7 who reads very well but limits his reading selections to video game manuals has recently become very interested in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. He loves them. He is now working on his own series! (Well... he has the titles of the books ready anyway!) I am reading them along with him and I really like them. He also liked Bunnicula (someone else mentioned that earlier in the thread.)

Hmmmm... I'll have to think for a while. I'll get back to you!

I did notice that the same author, Michael Reisman, is coming out with a sequel to the Gravity Keeper in Feb 2009. It is called The Octopus Effect, and seems to be the biology equivalent of the Gravity Keeper. It looks very, very fun!!

I had not bumped into this author before. I don't know if this is his first book or not, but I will have to keep an eye out for him.

http://www.michaelreisman.com/index.php?page=home

Hey Dottie! Where did you get an AR score for this book? I was just guessing, based on a book that I had never read. LOL! Sorry about missing the AR score by 0.1. Ouch! I looked it up on Scholastic Books and it was not in their system, as far as I could tell. Do you have some secret web site for book info that you have been holding out on us?

Here's the AR site we use:

http://www.arbookfind.com/default.aspx. And, here's another cool site:

http://www.bookadventure.org/.

Ahh, the wonders of edumacation. <groan>

Val

Dottie, GS9 has been able to access anything we find on that site. Any idea why some schools don't have full access?

I usually use RenLearn and Scholastic for reading levels.

Mission Impossible to the library went pretty well on Saturday! I really wanted to post back to add to the category of well illustrated, myth and poetry-infused books:

http://www.amazon.com/Frankenstein-Makes-Sandwich-Adam-Rex/dp/0152057668

Does 'mythological' apply to monsters? I am not sure, but this book is the first one DS8 grabbed from the pile and after he read it in sheer delight, he said 'You should really read this it is sooooo funny', so I dutifully picked it up.
It is hilarious.
These are all poems about various monsters having modern day dilemmas - the writing is great and funny funny funny. The illustrations are so brilliant too, with visual puns and little writings here and there!
___________


We also got another book of poems by Jack Prelutsky ('a Pizza the size of the Sun') which ds has also been enjoying. And some books on Norse and Greek myths. I am holding off on some of the other suggestions to give ds more options later in the year.
Thanks again everyone!!

Isn't it great when you can read & discuss the same books with them?

How about the Wayside School series by Louis Sachar? DS started reading these when he was 5. He has read and re-read them many times. "Holes" by the same author is very good too. There's also a movie on it. Another good, old classic I can think of is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.

To add: DS loves the "Choose your own adventure" series too. We are very lucky that we managed to find these in the library (even though they were torn and tattered!). When DS8 didn't know what else to read back in grade one, his teacher recommended him the Encyclopedia Brown books... which he found in the libraries too and devoured all of them!

Oooh, KG just started the Encyclopedia Brown books! He really likes them.

Does your ds have any other non-fiction interests? Some kids are just drawn to those. The DK Eyewitness books really are great, and there are a ton of topics. Or you could try some of the picture-heavy books aimed at adults -- space, weather, etc. KG *loves* his "Restless Skies" book!

If he's interested in mythology, D'Aulaire's mythology books are fabulous; they're oversized with great illustrations. I used to love the Greek one when I was that age, and she has several more:

http://www.amazon.com/DAulaires-Gre...mp;s=books&qid=1220801065&sr=1-1

Glad the trip went well!

My dd8 loved 'The Invention of Hugo Cabret' by Selznick and 'Kids' WHODUNITS' BY Hy Conrad.

Has anyone else picked up the Einstein Anderson series of books? DS8 loved those books last year. The books are a collection of short (3-4 page) stories where a boy (maybe 5th or 6th grade) uses science to outsmart his opponent (sometimes a bully) or to solve a mystery. They present you with the clues and then you get to turn the page and see if you guessed how Einstein solved the problem. Very fun!

Other books that DS has read recently:
1) My Side of the Mountain series: about a boy who goes off and lives by himself in the New England mountains and learns survival techniques. Very non-scary, but for the boy who loves being out in the woods.
2) Wrinkle in Time series: We are in the middle of book 3, although Harry Potter and Guardians of Ga'hoole have sidetracked us a bit.
3) Flight of the Dragon Kyn, and Dragon Milk by Susan Fletcher. Anything with Dragons has to be cool!
4) The Mistmantle Chronicles, Book 1 is Urchin of the Riding Star
5) Poppy and Rye and similar books by Avi. Animals (mice, porcupines, etc. must form friendships in order to overcome an obstacle-an owl who hunts them)

I will probably let him start reading the Brian Jacques books soon (Redwall, etc.) Does anyone have any experience with these?

I would like to offer my profound thanks to the person who suggested the Mad Misadventures of Emmaline and Rubberbones books by Howard Whitehouse. DS just read The Strictest School in the World, Being a Tale of a Clever Girl, a Rubber Boy and a Collection of Flying Machines, Mostly Broken. He absolutely loved it!!

If he likes silly poems, you might want to check out Polka Bats and Octopus Slacks by Calef Brown.

I am so excited just reading all these recommendations! And the good news is... most of the books are avail in the library. Thank you!!!
I am quite sure DS will like the Einstein Anderson stories because he likes anything that he can solve. He tends to look for all the books in the same series and tries to finish all of them! Another "older" series I missed out earlier were "Clue" books.

Polka Bats and Octapus Slacks has been a favorite of ours for years!

THATS IT!!

Thanks, its been bugging me all weekend.

Those stories are a hoot and a half!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mad_Scientists'_Club


The Mad Scientists' Club books build their plot devices around science, mechanical inclination, a do it yourself ethic, and some good-natured pranks, making the boys in these books sort of junior precursors to MacGyver - or a fictional counterpart to the real-life Rocket Boys. The early stories and the first book in the series were published in the wake of the impact of Sputnik and the space race and reflect the thinking of that period (the first book even includes a plug for joining the United States Air Force in the last story, "Night Rescue"). There is one odd, inexplicable exception to the usually science-based, non-supernatural nature of the stories, and that is "Big Chief Rainmaker" in the second book. The level of technology found in these books is of course "low-tech" by today's standards with no home computers or miniaturized electronics, but the technology depicted in the books (scuba, ham radio, helicopters, remotely radio-controlled devices) was, at the time, typical of the cutting edge of technology during the post-WWII, pre-Internet era.

LOL, we have Polka Bats too. My kids memorized Eliza's Pockets (dd 8) and Snails (ds 11) for their memory pieces when trying out for a play this summer. We had a ton of fun with those!

My son started reading Redwall books at age six. They have great vocabulary and the violence is minimal, though most are about battles between the good creatures and the bad . Mice, badgers, and hares are good, weasels, rats, and foxes are evil...

Someone recommended "The Flying Circus Physics book" by Jearl Walker. I managed to find it in the school library. Now DS can't stop reading it! It's a thick and wordy book...I think it will occupy him for quite awhile. Thank you!!!

Has anyone actually used bookadventure.org? I saw it recommended, but I would like to hear about experiences with the multiple choice quizzes.

Thanks.

May have already been mentioned, but DD8 and I have been jointly reading The Mysterious Benedict Society and loving it! We both wish we could fit in more reading time, and DD recently said what I often think when I find myself devouring a book: "we're over half finished - I'm going to miss it when we're done"....

Well, then, you're lucky. There's a second one (Mysterious Benedict Society). Don't remember the name, but you'll find it in the library or bookstore.