12 year old insisting on reading war and peace

I can't see what the problem is, I read war and peace at 9 and "A day in the life of Ivan Denisorvitch" at 11. I was a voracious reader and these books were the only ones in my dad's collection that I hadn't read.

I didn't understand either book, but it beat reading the back of a bleach bottle!

Let your dc read whatever he wants, obviously not anything unsuitable, as each book expands vocabulary and imagination.

My poor parents were constantly buying us books to feed our need and as a result I read history at uni and my two sisters read law and English. You can't beat a good read!

Try to shove some biographies and autobiographies his way. I read mostly these as a child and social history books and throughly enjoyed them. Once in a while I still have a blast of ‘themed’ reading about people from a certain era or country. Last one was the Chinese cultural revolution.

Sorry I started this then forgot about it. To update, I got him W&p for his birthday at the end of March and he's got about 50 pages left. He worked out he needed to read 20 pages a day to read it by next Friday and has done that, with extra at weekends if needed. Not really an approach to reading I've ever had, but hey. He loved the battle bits and quite liked the ruminations on politics, Pierre and Andréi talking about being a man and he couldn't stand Natasha. I tried and failed to work out who they were from the TV adaptation...

Definitely found it a slog at times but he's pleased he did it. Going to look at some of the recommendations above now- thanks for those.

Sorry typo - three lives for the tsar

For the Russia focus, try the trilogy by Stephanie plowman. One is “three lives for the - I had a pretty good understanding of the Russian revolution after reading through those a few times!

If he's fascinated with Germany ( I am too) he might enjoy Germania by Simon Winder, it's a travel / history book, in style similar to Bill Bryson so factual but amusing too.

Goodness George I'm sure you would!

Yes, if your DS is into the Napoleonic wars then suggest he tries Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard stories (1 novel, 17 short stories according to Wikipedia). They're great fun.

What about John le Carre books and Frederick Forsythe?

DS (14) is going through a Napoleonic phase at the moment. He started with non-fiction, moved onto the Temeraire series, (not 100% historically accurate I grant you: too many dragons), and is now having a go at Hornblower and Patrick O’Brien. I might suggest War And Peace to him - like your son, the worst that can happen is that he tries it and gives up.

I highly recommend the Rod Steiger / Christopher Plummer movie of Waterloo. Completely age-appropriate.

I first read it at 13/14 and have reread it about 6 times now. It's a lot of book to plough through but well worth the time.

Let him read it, why not? Censorship rules of the time mean that any references to sex or other adult issues will be very oblique anyway.

I was an avid reader at 12 and read a lot of my older sister’s English textbooks - Othello, Merchant of Venice, Dickens, some Jane Austen - and a lot of the social / romance context went over my head. As a girl, I found the sexist comments about women the most difficult to deal with, to be honest e.g. comments about women being intellectually inferior to men. It would have been helpful to have had an adult explain the history to me of why women were treated so badly in the past. Otherwise, nothing problematic about it and probably better for him than the disturbing violent stuff in computer games and films these days.

I read it about that age and it was fine, though I remember skipping some bits. I've not read it again so maybe it was a mistake in that sense but it won't do him any harm...

I was a precocious reader who started on my parents bookshelf at about the IPs son's age, W&P would be far less unsuitable than John Updike's Rabbit books which I ended up reading, think I had to reread various pony books to recover!

Goodness BlueMerchant - what a negative attitude! I would have been utterly bemused (and deeply insulted) if someone had suggested to me at 12 that I should find something 'easier' to read!

Sounds like he just wants to read it because he has heard others have given up on it -typical pre-teen. I'd give him something he could find easier and engage with- The Book thief is great.

I would guess W&P is pretty much ideal reading material for a history / war interested 12 year old boy. He can do the opposite of what I did at 12 - skip through the social politics and drawing room scenes and read all the battlefield drama in detail. It even splits into bite size chunks that way. I think it is available free on-line.

If he gets the fat book bug he could move onto Proust for a bit of contrast. But if he wants good shorter Russian hard to beat Dostoyevsky (probably when he's a wee bit older though)

The content isn't unsuitable for children - it's just quite long-winded!

The graphic novel is a good suggestion, or he might just want to plunge in to the text.

Appropriate? In what way? There's nothing inappropriate about War & Peace ... If the only 'danger' is that he might not finish it, what's the harm?

(Spoken as one who spent their early teens on Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Sholokhov etc. )

I would just leave him to it. I can't imagine a child who aspires to War and Peace is going to take very kindly to being offered Horrible Histories or Cynthia Harnett, wonderful as both those things are.
My 13yo dd started it but didn't get very far. It was free on Kindle though so who cares? My slightly older nephew finished it. Every time I saw him for months and months it was 'Read anything interesting lately?' 'nah, still reading War and Peace'. Which seemed a pity but it was kind of an achievement.

It's not unsuitable, no. Let him try - well, I mean, he's 12, I don't think my parents were involved in my reading matter at 12, really, he can read what he likes.

My DS also set out to tackle War and Peace around the age of 11 or 12. I'm not sure how far he got with it, or even if he finished it, but it appeared again on a family beach holiday last year - he is now 27.

I was about 13 when I read w&P. It’s bit difficult, just long. If there was anything terribly unsuitable, it must have gone straight over my head.

I'd wish him luck and let him crack on with it. If he gets through it, great...but he will probably have to read it again as an adult to fully understand it.

I could have done with a map to go with War and Peace when I read it, not as a child I hasten to say. It might also help to explain to him that upper-class Russians spoke French at that time.