Agree that I would try to steer him towards historic children's and young adult literature, such as Ivanhoe. How about. Jack London, Fenimoore Cooper, Alexandre Dumas, stuff like that? Adventure novels, with sophisticated vocabulary or historical insight but which treat stuff such as love, marriage, sexuality, and death, with the superficial chivalry a 9 yo can grasp. I recall reading a lot of novels too early - for some things, it does take emotional and, yes, physical maturity to actually understand beyond a superficial level, and as soon as you DO understand, yes, they can be very disturbing.
