My DD was all over the map at that age here are some that I think a boy might like too:-
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Harry Potter
The Hobbit
The Wind in the willows
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While I LOVE The Harry Potter Books & The Hobbit. I personally suggest you wait till he is a bit older. They do make excellent read out loud books. Something I had to learn a bit myself through experience was that as adults we can be in such a rush to introduce literature when we realized we have such a gifted reader. We forget to sometimes slow down a bit and wait till a kid is more age appropriate to enjoy the nuances book.
The Harry Potter books were designed to "grow" with the young teens and after book 3 they really are TEEN books. I honestly think they are better appreciated by children 8+, no mater their reading level. My experience is bright kids can actually be more sensitive to the violence and dying but not mature enough to really handle it.
Were a book to be read once and never looked sat again I may agree with you but we believe that a good book is something to be treasured and savoured again and again seeing new interpretations and things previously unoticed with each pass through.
The Hobbit is a children's book - no controversy there whatsoever
The wind in the willows - a ripping yarn with humour and pathos the first time I read it and I appreciated the 'class warfare' aspects of it later which then morphed into an understanding that change/revolution isn't always a synonym for progress on subsequent reeads/recollections of it
Harry Potter surprised me as DD had a surpringly rich and elaborate understanding of these books - we did eke them out so she had time to process each. She has subsequently re-read them several times, her favourite right now being the 5th one and I fully expect her to continue to enjoy them and see new subtleties with revisit.
I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree on this one
