Book recommendations for a 12 year old boy

August 6, 2015 11:20 AM

Hi MetaFilter, I'm looking for book recommendations for my little brother who is 12 years old. Other questions seem to be about book recommendations for 8-12 year old children who read ABOVE their grade level. My brother doesn't really enjoy reading all that much, and reads, in my opinion, below his grade level.

I don't really know what there is out there in between 3rd grade reading level and middle school reading level, but even though he is a middle schooler, I think I am looking for books that are at a 4th-6th grade reading level.

He has an aversion to reading thick books, so I am thinking more novellas or chapter books for children with larger print, and maybe some illustrations even. Or graphic novels for kids.

He's not interested in Harry Potter, and he's seen movies so sometimes if I recommend something, his response is "Well, I saw the movie" (e.g. Harry Potter, Coraline, Charlotte's Web, Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

In the past, he's enjoyed:
- Holes by Louis Sachar
-The Wayside School series
- Diary of a Wimpy kid book (and film) series
- Roald Dahl's The Witches

Currently, he says:
- his favourite book is Heat by Mike Lupica
- he's enjoying the Little League Series by Matt Christopher (baseball is a major interest of his-- actually, pretty much all sports)

I recommended the Jacob Two-Two books by Mordecai Richler as I recall having liked them when I was a child, and he did pick those up at the library and liked them.

Emotionally, I think he is ready for PG-13 themes, and is past the underwear/farts/boogers stage (think Captain Underpants -- something he also enjoyed in the past).

So far, other ideas I've had but have not recommended or given to him yet are:
- The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (a classic, has illustrations, and I think is a manageable length for him)
- Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book
- Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli (I remember liking it as a child)
- A Series of Unfortunate Events books (I enjoyed these as an adult)

Any other recommendations?

Thank you!

posted by spicytunaroll to Media & Arts (33 answers total)

There Will Be Bears by Ryan Gebhart

Zombie Tag by Hannah Moskowitz
posted by annathea at 11:26 AM on August 6, 2015

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Artemis Fowl series
The Boxcar Children series
Almost anything written by Judy Blume
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Wayside School series
Indian in the Cupboard series
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George

I could go on & on...
posted by TurquoiseZebra at 11:27 AM on August 6, 2015

Most anything by Gordon Korman
posted by tilde at 11:31 AM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Carl Hiaasen has written a bunch of books for his age group: Hoot, Flush, Scat, and Chomp, and also Skink - No Surrender (slightly more YA-oriented). School Library Journal called them "eco-thrillers for young adults".
posted by mogget at 11:31 AM on August 6, 2015

Best answer: Are you looking just for fiction? There's some great baseball nonfiction out there that might be a little above his pay grade right now but could really interest him soon—The Pitch That Killed wraps a bunch of stories from the 1920 season around the only player killed by a pitch during a MLB game, Ray Chapman. (Kind of Devil in the White City-ish, though I never actually finished that one.)

Bill James's Historical Baseball Abstract is a huge anthology of weird stories from the history of baseball, rankings of its best players, and odd facts that I waded through for months when I was ~14-15, and still come back to every year. James is best known for his work in baseball analytics but he's a remarkable writer, funny and opinionated in a way that most baseball fans wish they were and always ready to take and then successfully defend an unexpected position.

As for fiction, when I was 12-13 (2000-ish) I and all of my friends inexplicably got really into Agatha Christie novels. We might have been nerdier than your little brother, but we loved the puzzle-solving aspect of it, and the crazy twists—I'd start with And Then There Were None or Murder on the Orient Express.

Depending on whether he's felt super alienated by The World yet it might also be Catcher in the Rye time.
posted by Polycarp at 11:33 AM on August 6, 2015

I was going to recommend Phantom Tollbooth, but since you are all over that, these lists might be of help (sorry, linking the normal way doesn't work on my current device):

http://www.goodreads.com/book/similar/1782584-the-phantom-tollbooth

https://www.tastekid.com/like/The-Phantom-Tollbooth

http://www.slj.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/SLJ_Fuse8_Top100_Novels.pdf
posted by bearwife at 11:34 AM on August 6, 2015

Beverly Cleary's Henry and Paula Danziger's Matthew( get these at a library) books.
posted by brujita at 11:35 AM on August 6, 2015

Our 12-year-old loves the Percy Jackson series (mythology references, adventure, etc.)
See if you can get him started on Book 1, "The Lightning Thief".

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (a cartoon-in-a-novel) was another huge favorite. There's a ton of those, here's the first one.
posted by monospace at 11:36 AM on August 6, 2015

He might like John Bellairs books like The House with a Clock in its Walls, which are mildly scary, not too long and generally have a few Edward Gorey illustrations.
posted by Esteemed Offendi at 11:39 AM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: My 4th grader loves the baseball "novels" by Cal Ripken, like this one. Amazon lists them as being for ages 8-12.
posted by BurntHombre at 11:41 AM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Maybe try Robert Muchamore's CHERUB series (starts with The Recruit) - it's one of our YA Librarian's go to series (along with Percy Jackson) for adolescent boys who don't like to read much. The main character is about your brother's age, so easy identification and all that. The series is pretty fast paced (think Clive Cussler or ghost written Tom Clancy Ops Center) and is about kids who are spies who face down smugglers, bust terrorists, and other acts of daring-do.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:42 AM on August 6, 2015

Goosebumps! There are a ton of them, and because they're scary, they don't feel babyish even though the reading is relatively simple. My middle and high schoolers who struggle with reading love them!
posted by decathecting at 11:47 AM on August 6, 2015

Dark but fun read: Zombie Baseball Beatdown by Paolo Bacigalupi
3 friends from a little league team protect their town from a zompie infection brought on by bad meat from the local processing plant, the zombie elements are gross in a way a pre-teen boy would appreciate without being too too scary there's some social justice-y themes in it YMMV there based on parenting philosophy etc.

I really liked Will Hobbs books as a kid. They're sort of boys'-own adventures out in the west.
posted by edbles at 11:56 AM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy is what got me interested in reading at that age.
posted by bdc34 at 11:58 AM on August 6, 2015

The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death by Daniel Pinkwater.
posted by rustcellar at 12:14 PM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

I just introduce my son to Startide Rising, by David Brin. My son has never been a big reader (in English he just reads Guiness Book of World Records and in Japanese he just reads comic books, or books with lost of illustrations), but he is steadily making his way through the book, which is quite pleasing.

When I was 12 and 13 I was reading books basically aimed at adults - lots of Harry Harrison, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Ursula K. LeGuin and even Stephen R. Donaldson.
posted by Nevin at 12:15 PM on August 6, 2015

Oh yeah, I loved Daniel Pinkwater, too. I still remember the first time I read Snarkout Boys (the first Pinkwater book I ever read was Alan Mendelson, Boy from Mars).
posted by Nevin at 12:16 PM on August 6, 2015

I also was going to say Hatchet (and I think there are several more after that).

Also the Stanley Family books by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, starting with The Headless Cupid.
posted by radioamy at 12:53 PM on August 6, 2015

Are Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books considered too dated these days? I loved those in late elementary/early middle school.
posted by timestep at 12:58 PM on August 6, 2015

Seconding John Bellairs' books, particularly the Lewis Barnavelt novels. They got me deeply interested in reading at around your brother's age, and I still am 30+ years later.
posted by ryanshepard at 1:17 PM on August 6, 2015

Advising caution at just picking up Robert Heinlein ... verify you're picking up the "Juveniles" written with tweens and teens in mind. Non-juveniles are longer, and may contain more adult content than you may find appropriate at this time.
posted by tilde at 1:24 PM on August 6, 2015

The Baseball Card Adventures by Dan Gutman sound just about right. I enjoyed them when I was around that age, and there are now 12 of them. (I remember the first four particularly fondly; the others came when I was past that phase.)
posted by pitrified at 1:58 PM on August 6, 2015

Best answer: Comics are an awesome way to make reading approachable (and you spend as much time looking at pictures as reading the writing and nobody can make you feel bad about that). Does he like Adventure Time? Because the AT comics are absolutely fantastic and having a tie-in to something he already likes might do the trick. This thread has lots of age-appropriate comic suggestions, and I bet your local library will be a good way to access many of them for free.
posted by Mizu at 2:45 PM on August 6, 2015

Classic sci-fi is pretty good for this. The books are short and focus on IDEAS and ADVENTURE instead of getting bogged down in things like characterization and if there is sex or other "mature themes" it is usually super dry and abstract by today's standards:
Asimov's Foundation trilogy or Robot books, Clarke's Fountains of Paradise or Childhood's End, Bester's The Demolished Man or The Stars My Destination.
Also good are classic anthologies of sci-fi stories. Containing stories like The 9 Billion Names of God or The Cold Equations.

As far as graphic novels are concerned, I guess you could go with Bone, but really, anything made by Marvel and DC up to the 2000s was made with kids in mind. They wouldn't be graphic novels per se (ie contained stories) but rather collected arcs, but still good and a gateway to more reading perhaps. Things like the Dark Phoenix Saga or Kraven's Last Hunt would be the stand-outs as far as I'm concerned but if he likes specific characters then just pick up something featuring them. If you sign up for something like Marvel Unlimited then he would have digital access to all the comics he could read for $10 a month. More recently, Green Lantern from the return of Hal Jordan up to the War of Light (lanterns of every colour of the rainbow) would be pretty perfect for a 12 year old too.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:52 PM on August 6, 2015

Soup by Robert Pattinson Peck, based on his life growing up in 1920s rural Vermont, and his hooligan friend, "Soup." I read about 3 or 4 of the books from when I was your little brother's age, but it looks like there's a dozen of them now.

Lots of good SF suggestions in any portmanteau in a storm's post above. I think I was around 12-13 (and a bit more of a librivore) when I started into William Gibson's "Sprawl" trilogy, beginning with Neuromancer. I think each of those books has a little bit of sex.

I also got into a Robert Ludlum kick-- elaborate spy novels with action, but never what he'd think of as high-tech, since they were all written in the 1970s/80s.
posted by Sunburnt at 3:00 PM on August 6, 2015

The Crossover. Sports-themed (basketball), great writing and action, and a sly way to get boys in this age group to love poetry.
posted by thetortoise at 3:58 PM on August 6, 2015

Best answer: (Also, it's an easy, fast read, thanks to the poetry/rap format, so it would be perfect for your brother. And it's a book about a relationship between brothers! It's my absolute favorite choice for reluctant readers who love sports.)
posted by thetortoise at 4:08 PM on August 6, 2015

Summerland by Michael Chabon. A young boy is recruited by faeries to form a travelling baseball team, play his way through mythical worlds, defeat Coyote and save the universe.
posted by chrisulonic at 4:23 PM on August 6, 2015

If there are any books like Harry Potter that you really think he is not giving a chance (or any mentioned here), you could agree to read him the first chapter. If he likes it, he can continue, if not, move on to something else. Sometimes the first chapter is enough to hook you in.
posted by Youremyworld at 5:31 PM on August 6, 2015

This year my 12 year old daughter read and loved the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson. They're about a 4th grade reading level, but aimed at kids 12 and up. And there's a manga version, too, for even easier reading. The main character is a girl, but there are important boy characters, too. My 9 year old son also loved the series.

There are a bunch of other James Patterson books aimed at a slightly younger audience (12 and under) that might also interest him.

You might also check out the Weenies books by David Lubar (e.g. In the Land of the Lawn Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales.) They're books of short stories that are both funny and scary.
posted by Redstart at 6:42 PM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

OMG Robert Ludlum. I must have read all of his books when I was that age.

Good Omens would be a good book too. After reading it I asked a cousin who lived in England what the deal with Milton Keynes was and he just laughed.

The Cartoon History of the Universe is great too. I had the first 2 volumes as a kid and loved them.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:08 PM on August 6, 2015

The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Wear Midnight. A mini-series by Terry Pratchett.

Definitely at a kid's reading level, and since the main character is 9 years old, it's probably about right. Plus it's Terry Pratchett.
posted by aniola at 9:17 AM on August 8, 2015

Another thought is to give him a list of suggestions that you've pre-checked out that also have Full Cast Audio or the like audio books. I've got kids with issues and they do better reading along with audio books (they did all the Magic Tree House books). I got the idea from our school library who loaned out ipods just for this purpose.

I find my kids do better with a "Full Cast" style rendering (different actors for different parts) rather than one actor doing all the voices (easier for them to differentiate). We do both read-along and listen-together (to pause and discuss -- right now me and the oldest are going through The Martian since he can handle the swearing and short adult conversational topics).
posted by tilde at 7:17 AM on August 10, 2015