Choosing the right books to nurture a love of reading is vital and this week’s guest author taps into personal and professional knowledge gained as a bookseller and a parent. Read on for some great insights and suggested titles to whet the reading appetite for different aged readers.
As a bookseller and a parent I thought I’d share with you what my kids have been reading over summer and our families journey in reading so far.
My husband grew up in a bookshop and whilst his bookselling parents read to him often and shared books, he regards himself as a reluctant reader until he found the ‘Tomorrow When the War Began’ book series by John Marsden as a teen. So my message here is, “don’t panic if your kid isn’t a reader yet,” maybe they just haven’t found what they love.
I was a voracious reader who happily accompanied my grandparents on their weekly library trip as well as made great use of my school libraries as a child and teen. Yes, I’ve tried to make my kids love the books I loved growing up. Sadly, nothing captured them quite like it did me, but we’ve found that letting them discover what interests them is more likely to keep them reading.
We have three boys and whilst two are now independent readers and in high school, the third Mr6 is still emerging and we continue to grow his confidence in learning to read. So lets starts with what’s been working to engage my smallest (I’d rather be outdoors) child in reading.
We’ve been loving Sally Rippin’s School of Monster series, we started with me reading the majority of the words and him just reading the coloured word at the end of each sentence (this took the pressure off and made it easy for him at the end of a long day as we usually read before bed). He’s now following the stories and adding in extra words as he recognises them and particularly likes the green/yellow/red new word breakdown at the end of each story in the bind-up sets.
I also like to have a novel we’re reading together that’s just for the joy of sharing a story, a recent read we enjoyed was Bravepaw and the Heartstone of Alluria by L M Wilkinson. And on those nights where we just need a quick read to share we still return to picture books, a recent favourite is When the Lights Went Out by Lian Tanner.
My middle child Mr12 while now a fully independent reader, found the move from illustrated chapter books to chapter books harder as he loved the easy read and dislikes change. He struggled to find what he liked on offer in upper primary reads. After many try’s and fail’s we figured out he likes a puzzle or a mystery to solve and interpersonal dynamics at play. Some titles that have worked for him in the last year are:
* Escape Room by Christopher Edge was the book that helped me find what he liked.
* We loved Stewart Foster’s Books, Check Mates and All the Way Down being two popular titles.
* The Spy Academy series by Jack Heath have been a great quick action packed read for him.
* The Cherub series by Robert Muchamore kept him busy for a while thanks to the number of titles on offer.
* His most recent read was The Bletchley Riddle by Ruth Sepetys & Steve Sheinkin.
My eldest Mr14 has always been a book lover, he just reads and reads and reads. His upper primary years had him bent over the pages of both fiction and non-fiction war stories which then progressed to the dystopian offerings of The Maze Runner, The Divergent series and the Gone series. He loved Tomorrow when the War Began by John Marsden and The Cherub series by Robert Muchamore just to name a few.
These were some of his summer reads (I’m jealous of all the time he has to dive into a great book);
* The Outsiders by S E Hinton
* The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku
* The Last Reality series by Jason Segel
* The Jack West Jnr series and the Scarecrow series and everything else he could get his hands on by Matthew Reilly.
Andy Durkin
Bookseller at Petrarch’s Bookshop
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Editor’s note: It is wonderful to see such an exciting list of titles that will appeal to boys! Just a note of caution that as the main characters in the Cherub series age and mature, so too do some of the themes.
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