Reading suggestions: 10 year old boy

[bohemiancoast]

Hello chaps: this is a sort of semi-regular 'recommend books for my child' post.

Background. Daughter is voracious, self-directed reader who works with libraries to find the sort of thing she likes to read.

Son isn't pro-active about books, preferring non-book entertainment when it's available. But has moved on from sharecropping series such as BeastQuest and Warrior Cats, and likes Lemony Snicket and Cherub. Quite a lot of what he reads are the books his sister has just finished reading.

He's currently devouring Little Brother with great enthusiasm.

He needs, I think, plenty of plot and strong young characters. Definite bonus points for computers and video games. We have pretty much no luck with classic books for him.

Comments

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

They might be a little old, but Scott Westerfeld's stuff is pretty good - So Yesterday is a standalone and probably aimed slightly younger than the others, so you could start there and if that suits then there's a whole bunch of other Westerfeld YA novels. Some of Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series?

The Hunger Games and the Patrick Ness books are very good, but I'm not sure how good they are for 10 year olds - the Ness is quite bleak as noted above, and The Hunger Games is probably fine but lots of violence and the last book has some discussion of the rape and torture of several of the characters. I'm sure I was reading much worse when I was ten (both in content and in quality) but you might want to check first.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Yes, he loves Uglies & its sequelae.