Has anyone found anything their reluctant reader actually enjoys reading?

Horrible Histories

My son is 8 and was a reluctant reader but discovered bunny vs monkey books by Jamie smart. They are like comic books with pictures on every page, speech bubbles and thought bubbles and funny words. Got him reading for fun and he asked for more for Christmas.x

Is she is still struggling with phonics has she had her hearing tested? My dd is dyslexic and probably adhd but it was the fact that she can't pass a hearing test when she has the slightest bit of a cold that had the biggest impact on her reading.

The ottaline books by Chris Ridell were the only thing I could get her to enthusiastically read for a long time.

@Dramatic There’s definitely still time! Reading apparently didn’t click for my BIL til he was year 6, but then it did.

But I suppose I just wanted to reassure you that even if it never does click, things can still work out. I wish I’d known a decade ago it would all be ok in the end, would have saved a lot of worry! Just keep doing the little things you can do ❤️

My son is a very reluctant reader, total opposite to my eldest.
Hes in Y4 and still really struggles, hates reading at home etc and no interest in reading for pleasure.

He adores cooking and baking so we do a lot, but he has to google the recipe and then read the instructions to me.

He loves science, so we will do experiments and he has to find and read instructions.

If we’re out, I’ll say I can’t read a sign so he has to help and read it for me

Basically anything I can do to get him to read without him realising he’s reading.

And when that fails good old bribery so I can sign his school diary🤷‍♀️

Nostalgia rush!

The only books my reluctant reader ever really enjoyed were Horrid Henry and The Hunger Games.
9 is probably too old for the first, and too young for the latter.

He's now 20 and is working his way through A Series of Unfortunate events (he reads about 2 books per year) and Heartstopper.

A series of unfortunate events might be ok at 9. I've never read them so couldn't say for sure.

The Mr Penguin books are brilliant, funny and lots of illustrations.

My sons 9 and autistic he loves -

Billy and the mini monsters
Roald Dahl
Wrigglesbottom primary
Horrid Henry

He also likes non fiction about subjects of interest- planets, dinosaurs, Mario

These are such good ideas and such a wonderful success story - thank you for sharing this!

Lemony Snicket A Series of Unfortunate Events is the only fiction my DS (10) has ever enjoyed.

He’s usually happier to read non fiction if anything

And in terms of working on his reading, we did ten mins of “Dancing Bears” every night - it’s a synthetic phonics programme that we found easy to do at home and pretty successful. I taught my subsequent children to read using it, even though they weren’t dyslexic.

My dyslexic and ADHD son never really did get into reading - whilst he did eventually learn to master reading on a functional level, it was always (and still is) too effortful to be enjoyable. My solution was just to read to him all the books he’d otherwise have read to himself until he was about 13. After that he moved onto audiobooks- including all his GCSE texts. My proudest moment was his learning support teacher praising his vocabulary which she said was as good as a prolific reader - because of all the reading we’d done together. He got 6 on his GCSE English, and is now at Uni. Do not despair @Dramatic be positive, keep the pressure off (read to her as much as you can) and all can be well.

Try Raina Telgemeier (I've probably misspelt that) - Invisible Emmy, Positively Izzy etc. Also Rollergirl by Terri Jamieson. They are a mix of graphic novel and ordinary prose.

Dc1 was a reluctant reader, diagnosed recently with severe dyslexia & processing disorder. He loved Asterix to read together & Commando comics as he loves history. He moved independently to Dogman & read those. I will add I read with him throughout over the years, stories & books on topics or interests of his. Turns out he wasn’t keen initially on reading but loved to listen. Appreciate not necessarily easy with ADHD.

Dogman, Wings of Fury graphic novels (NOT the books!), The Phoenix magazine and associated books - eg Bunny vs Monkey. Basically cartoon/comic style. She dislikes big blocks of writing. She finds it difficult to follow where she is. I suspect she could by dyslexic. I've mentioned it to school but not sure if they've not checked or not found anything.

Mine loved Garfield and the Tom gates books which look more like cartoons/children’s doodles. More to look than just the words and rather funny

Jacqueline Wilson and the Lemony Snicket books were the only things my DD with ADHD would read at that age.

Mr gum is hilarious

@Dramatic@Dramatic for many dc phonics is a

Barrier to reading not a help. One of my dc really got it so I never questioned it until dc 2 failed the phonics test. It was presented as this huge issue but I was never given any help by the school.

It was only covid and mn when I asked, what can I do that posters said maybe phonics is the barrier and go back to plain site reading, flash cards and so on which we did during covid.
Phonics was massively over complicating it for her. She just needed site reading.

RWI was the source of my child’s hatred of reading too. Thankfully DC2 is at a different school using twinkl, and he loves reading. I was so sad for a long time that DC1 hated reading

Depending on the reason why your DD hates reading, books that are age appropriate might help. Most books aimed at children who can't read have stories that are not complex enough to interest a 9 year old. My DD struggled to read anything until she succeeded with Harry Potter books when she was in Year 4. She describes the experience as being like a duck to water - suddenly she was ready for reading. In Year 3 she cried when she couldn't get past the first page while her friends were competing with how many times they had read Harry Potter by then.

She always loved audio books, which in hindsight was a big clue that the narrative mattered. It's hard to create an interesting story using monosyllabic words.

Reading a couple of years later than her contemporaries hasn't held her back.

Oh, and phuck phonics if it isn't working for your child.

My 9 year old DD is similar, but she enjoys graphic novels. Her favourites are The Babysitters Club series.