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.
