Good Reads for Tween boys?

[sweetbaby]

Could you list some great (wholesome) books for 11yo boys?

Thanks so much :)

[phathui5]

Ted Dekker's graphic novels

[laughing lioness]

The Bark of the Bog Owl by Jonathan Rodgers
Duncan's War by Douglas Bond
Stephen Lawhead has a couple of good series- the Hood series. Also Pendragon series (I haven't read that one but plan to soon :)).
Ted Dekker White, Black and Red- I like lots of his other books, too but some are a little edgy.

[Tiffani]

I found some at www.shpublishing.com

This is Susan Kemmerer's sight; the author of Apple's Spelling.

I've not bought any, but they look great!

[sweetbaby]

Thanks, everyone! Keep 'em coming! :)

[JennW in SoCal]

These are some of the titles my younger ds enjoyed at that age:

classics:
The Hobbit
Tom Sawyer
Sherlock Holmes stories

other recent titles:
the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan -- a big favorite
the Charlie Bone series by Jenny Nimmo
the Redwall series by Brian Jackques
the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathon Stroud -- another big favorite
Robert Heinlein wrote a few titles for boys with titles such as "Have Spacesuit Will Travel"
Mysterious Benedict Society -- I think there are 2 now? They've been popular with families on this board
Cornelia Funke's books, especially the Inkheart series
Someone else mentioned the Pendragon series
Erin Hunter's books about a clan of cats -- sounds silly, but they are quite popular

I don't know what your definition of wholesome is, but I didn't find any of them offensive. Your views may be quite different, so check them all out on Amazon!

[stansclan89]

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch
Little Britches

Um...can't think of any right now :/

Sonlight has good lists with reading levels.

[Lori D.]

In no way trying to offend or flame anyone, but I found the Pendragon series by Stephen Lawhead to be geared for adults, not that well written, and one of the books is just a series of battles filled with buckets o' blood -- again, just my opinion! : ) Ted Dekker is also not geared for tweens, IMO. Below are some alternatives of well-written books really geared for children/young teens. BEST of luck in finding some good matches for your family. Warmest regards, Lori D.


NON FICTION
- The Way Things Work (MacCauley)
- Pyramid; Cathedral; Roman City; etc. (MacCauley)
- Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun (Blumberg)


CLASSICS
- Wind in the Willows (Grahame)
- Rikki Tikki Tavi (Kipling) -- one of my boys' favorites
- The Jungle Book (Kipling)
- Black Beauty (Sewell)
- The Secret Garden (Hodges)
- Paddle-to-the-Sea, Tree in the Trail, Seabird, Minn of the Mississippi (Holling)
- Black Ships Before Troy; The Wanderings of Odysseus (Sutcliffe)
- Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain)
- Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (and others by Howard Pyle)
- Treasure Island (Stevenson)
- Call of the Wild (London)


REAL LIFE ADVENTURE
- The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (Aiken) -- Victorian setting -- one of my boys' favorites
- The Great and Terrible Quest (Lovett) -- Medieval setting
- The Toothpaste Millionaire (Merrill) -- 1970s inner city US setting
- Little Britches series (Moody) -- 1900 rural US setting
- Island of the Blue Dolphins (O'Dell) -- abandoned alone on an island story
- From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (Konigsburg)
- The View From Saturday (Konigsburg)
- In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson (Lord) -- one of my boys' favorites
- The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Robinson)
- Five on a Treasure Island (Blyton)
- Call it Courage (Sperry)
- The Cay (Taylor) -- survival story of a boy and an old man shipwrecked
- The Great Brain (Fitzgerald)


DETECTIVE/MYSTERY
- Hardy Boys series (Dixon)
- The Westing Game (Raskin)
- Chasing Vermeer (Balliet)
- The Roman Mystery series (Lawrence)
- The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn (Hoobler) -- and the rest of the Samurai Mystery series
- Case of the Baker Street Irregular (Newman) -- and others in the series by Newman


FANTASY
- The Reluctant Dragon (Grahame)
- Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis)
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)
- Half Magic; Magic by the Lake, Knight's Castle; Time Garden; Seven Day Magic (Eager) -- a favorite series!
- Five Children and It; The Phoenix and the Carpet; The Book of Dragons (Nesbit) -- another favorite series!
- The Father Christmas Letters (Tolkien)
- The Secret of Platform 13 (Ibbotson)
- City of Ember; People of Sparks (Du Prau)
- The Ordinary Princess (Kaye)
- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Fleming)
- The Phantom Tollbooth (Juster)
- The Never Ending Story (Ende) -- one of my boys' favorites
- The Hobbit (Tolkien)


FUN TALL TALE
- The Whipping Boy (Fleischman)
- Just So Stories (Kipling)
- Adventures of TinTin (Herge)
- The Great Turkey Walk (Karr)
- By the Great Horn Spoon (Fleischman) -- one of my boys' all time favorites
- Holes (Sachar) -- fun!
- The Twenty-One Balloons (DuBois) -- Jules Verne like story


HISTORICAL FICTION ADVENTURE
- The Golden Goblet (McGraw) -- Ancient Egypt
- Hittite Warrior (Williamson) -- Ancient Egypt/Hittite/Israel
- The Bronze Bow (Speare) -- Ancient Rome/Israel
- Detectives in Togas; Mystery of the Roman Ransom (Winterfeld) -- Ancient Rome
- A Single Shard (Park) -- 1100s Korea
- The Kite Fighters (Park) -- 1400s Korea
- Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow (French)
- Adam of the Road (Gray) -- Medieval England
- The Door in the Wall (de Angeli) -- Medieval England
- Otto of the Silver Hand (Pyle) -- Medieval Europe
- The Master Puppeteer (Paterson) - 1700s Japan
- Om-Kas-Toe (Thomasa) -- Colonial US/Native American
- The Sign of the Beaver (Speare) -- Colonial US/Native American
- Diary of an Early American Boy (Sloane) -- Colonial US
- Amos Fortune, Freeman (Yates) -- Colonial US
- The Journeyman (Caldwell) -- Colonial US
- Johnny Tremain (Forbes) -- Colonial US
- Across Five Aprils (Hunt) -- Civil War
- Sounder (Armstrong) -- post Civil War South
- The Great Wheel (Lawson) -- building of the first Ferris Wheel in 1893 -- a favorite!
- Little Pear (Lattimore) --1900 China
- The Big Wave (Buck) -- Japanese survivors of a tsunami
- Twenty and Ten (Bishop) -- WWII French children hide Jewish children
- Winged Watchman (Van Stockum) -- WWII occupied Denmark
- Number the Stars (Lenski)-- WWII Dutch girl helps her Jewish friend
- Snow Treasure (McSwigan))-- WWII Norweigan children hide the country's gold
- The House of Sixty Fathers (de Jong) -- WWII occupied China


BIOGRAPHY
- Robert Fulton, Boy Craftsman (Henry) -- inventor of steam engine as a boy
- Land I Lost; Water Buffalo Days (Nhuong) -- adventures in pre-war rural Vietnam
- Carry On, Mr. Bowditch (Latham) early US man who improved naval navigation
- Naya Nuki (Thomasa) -- friend of Sacajewea who escaped slavery and traveled 1000 miles to get home
- Behind Rebel Lines (Reit) -- teen girl disguised as a boy / Union spy in Civil War
- Lincoln: A Photobiography -- beautiful photos / text telling Lincoln's life
- Born in the Year of Courage (Crofford) -- shipwrecked Japanese teen boy in 1850s


ANIMALS (real)
- Rascal (North)
- Shiloh (Naylor)
- Owls in the Family (Mowat)
- Sounder (Armstrong)
- Ginger Pye (Estes)
- The Black Stallion, The Black Stallion Returns, Island Stallion (Farley) -- a favorite
- My Side of the Mountain (George) -- and others in the series -- a favorite
- Where the Red Fern Grows (Rawls)
- Summer of the Monkeys (Rawls)
- Gentle Ben (Morey) -- and other animal stories by Walt Morey



ANIMALS (talking animals)
- Ben and I (Lawson) -- a favorite
- The Rescuers, Miss Bianca, Miss Bianca in the Orient (Sharpe) -- an all time favorite series
- Basil of Baker Street (Titus) -- a Sherlock Holmes mouse
- Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (O'Brien)



NOT READ YET, BUT RECOMMENDED TO US
- Gone Away Lake (Enright)
- Swallows and Amazons (Ransome)
- Redwall Series (Jacques)
- dragon books by Cornelia Funke
- Peter and the Starcatchers and the sequels by Dave Barry

[angela&4boys]

My tween boy loved the whole Farm Mystery Series:
http://www.castleberryfarmspress.com/mystery%20books.html

He also enjoyed:
Detectives in Togas
(and wants to read the follow-up Mystery of the Roman Ransom)
Old Yeller (although I recall some mild language, but it was a time for discussion and he is on the mature side)
Odysseus and the Serpent's Maze

[sweetbaby]

Thank you so much! This is very helpful.

[amilkingmaid]

In no way trying to offend or flame anyone, but I found the Pendragon series by Stephen Lawhead to be geared for adults, not that well written, and one of the books is just a series of battles filled with buckets o' blood -- again, just my opinion! : ) Ted Dekker is also not geared for tweens, IMO. Below are some alternatives of well-written books really geared for children/young teens. BEST of luck in finding some good matches for your family. Warmest regards, Lori D.


NON FICTION
- The Way Things Work (MacCauley)
- Pyramid; Cathedral; Roman City; etc. (MacCauley)
- Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun (Blumberg)


CLASSICS
- Wind in the Willows (Grahame)
- Rikki Tikki Tavi (Kipling) -- one of my boys' favorites
- The Jungle Book (Kipling)
- Black Beauty (Sewell)
- The Secret Garden (Hodges)
- Paddle-to-the-Sea, Tree in the Trail, Seabird, Minn of the Mississippi (Holling)
- Black Ships Before Troy; The Wanderings of Odysseus (Sutcliffe)
- Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain)
- Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (and others by Howard Pyle)
- Treasure Island (Stevenson)
- Call of the Wild (London)


REAL LIFE ADVENTURE
- The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (Aiken) -- Victorian setting -- one of my boys' favorites
- The Great and Terrible Quest (Lovett) -- Medieval setting
- The Toothpaste Millionaire (Merrill) -- 1970s inner city US setting
- Little Britches series (Moody) -- 1900 rural US setting
- Island of the Blue Dolphins (O'Dell) -- abandoned alone on an island story
- From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (Konigsburg)
- The View From Saturday (Konigsburg)
- In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson (Lord) -- one of my boys' favorites
- The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Robinson)
- Five on a Treasure Island (Blyton)
- Call it Courage (Sperry)
- The Cay (Taylor) -- survival story of a boy and an old man shipwrecked
- The Great Brain (Fitzgerald)


DETECTIVE/MYSTERY
- Hardy Boys series (Dixon)
- The Westing Game (Raskin)
- Chasing Vermeer (Balliet)
- The Roman Mystery series (Lawrence)
- The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn (Hoobler) -- and the rest of the Samurai Mystery series
- Case of the Baker Street Irregular (Newman) -- and others in the series by Newman


FANTASY
- The Reluctant Dragon (Grahame)
- Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis)
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)
- Half Magic; Magic by the Lake, Knight's Castle; Time Garden; Seven Day Magic (Eager) -- a favorite series!
- Five Children and It; The Phoenix and the Carpet; The Book of Dragons (Nesbit) -- another favorite series!
- The Father Christmas Letters (Tolkien)
- The Secret of Platform 13 (Ibbotson)
- City of Ember; People of Sparks (Du Prau)
- The Ordinary Princess (Kaye)
- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Fleming)
- The Phantom Tollbooth (Juster)
- The Never Ending Story (Ende) -- one of my boys' favorites
- The Hobbit (Tolkien)


FUN TALL TALE
- The Whipping Boy (Fleischman)
- Just So Stories (Kipling)
- Adventures of TinTin (Herge)
- The Great Turkey Walk (Karr)
- By the Great Horn Spoon (Fleischman) -- one of my boys' all time favorites
- Holes (Sachar) -- fun!
- The Twenty-One Balloons (DuBois) -- Jules Verne like story


HISTORICAL FICTION ADVENTURE
- The Golden Goblet (McGraw) -- Ancient Egypt
- Hittite Warrior (Williamson) -- Ancient Egypt/Hittite/Israel
- The Bronze Bow (Speare) -- Ancient Rome/Israel
- Detectives in Togas; Mystery of the Roman Ransom (Winterfeld) -- Ancient Rome
- A Single Shard (Park) -- 1100s Korea
- The Kite Fighters (Park) -- 1400s Korea
- Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow (French)
- Adam of the Road (Gray) -- Medieval England
- The Door in the Wall (de Angeli) -- Medieval England
- Otto of the Silver Hand (Pyle) -- Medieval Europe
- The Master Puppeteer (Paterson) - 1700s Japan
- Om-Kas-Toe (Thomasa) -- Colonial US/Native American
- The Sign of the Beaver (Speare) -- Colonial US/Native American
- Diary of an Early American Boy (Sloane) -- Colonial US
- Amos Fortune, Freeman (Yates) -- Colonial US
- The Journeyman (Caldwell) -- Colonial US
- Johnny Tremain (Forbes) -- Colonial US
- Across Five Aprils (Hunt) -- Civil War
- Sounder (Armstrong) -- post Civil War South
- The Great Wheel (Lawson) -- building of the first Ferris Wheel in 1893 -- a favorite!
- Little Pear (Lattimore) --1900 China
- The Big Wave (Buck) -- Japanese survivors of a tsunami
- Twenty and Ten (Bishop) -- WWII French children hide Jewish children
- Winged Watchman (Van Stockum) -- WWII occupied Denmark
- Number the Stars (Lenski)-- WWII Dutch girl helps her Jewish friend
- Snow Treasure (McSwigan))-- WWII Norweigan children hide the country's gold
- The House of Sixty Fathers (de Jong) -- WWII occupied China


BIOGRAPHY
- Robert Fulton, Boy Craftsman (Henry) -- inventor of steam engine as a boy
- Land I Lost; Water Buffalo Days (Nhuong) -- adventures in pre-war rural Vietnam
- Carry On, Mr. Bowditch (Latham) early US man who improved naval navigation
- Naya Nuki (Thomasa) -- friend of Sacajewea who escaped slavery and traveled 1000 miles to get home
- Behind Rebel Lines (Reit) -- teen girl disguised as a boy / Union spy in Civil War
- Lincoln: A Photobiography -- beautiful photos / text telling Lincoln's life
- Born in the Year of Courage (Crofford) -- shipwrecked Japanese teen boy in 1850s


ANIMALS (real)
- Rascal (North)
- Shiloh (Naylor)
- Owls in the Family (Mowat)
- Sounder (Armstrong)
- Ginger Pye (Estes)
- The Black Stallion, The Black Stallion Returns, Island Stallion (Farley) -- a favorite
- My Side of the Mountain (George) -- and others in the series -- a favorite
- Where the Red Fern Grows (Rawls)
- Summer of the Monkeys (Rawls)
- Gentle Ben (Morey) -- and other animal stories by Walt Morey



ANIMALS (talking animals)
- Ben and I (Lawson) -- a favorite
- The Rescuers, Miss Bianca, Miss Bianca in the Orient (Sharpe) -- an all time favorite series
- Basil of Baker Street (Titus) -- a Sherlock Holmes mouse
- Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (O'Brien)



NOT READ YET, BUT RECOMMENDED TO US
- Gone Away Lake (Enright)
- Swallows and Amazons (Ransome)
- Redwall Series (Jacques)
- dragon books by Cornelia Funke
- Peter and the Starcatchers and the sequels by Dave Barry
What a great list. Thanks for sharing it!

[MariaTX]

G. A. Henty's Christian Historical Fiction books. My boys loved these. Especially my oldest. The vocabulary can be challenging, but the adventures kept their attention. We started out reading them out loud, but my older son got tired of waiting on the rest of us, so he started reading them on his own. HTH