Recommendations for read aloud novels for a 13 yr old boy

[IdaBWells]

My son is a strong all rounder academically but his teachers here in the USA after some testing said that he could do with more reading to improve his language arts. I'm sure this is down to screen time and no reading. So DH and I thought it would be a good idea to have a family read aloud each evening to keep his interest. I am hoping you can all give some good suggestions. He is quite analytical and a sophisticated thinker, he surprises me with the interesting things he has to say. He just recently self-diagnosed a medical condition after consulting with Dr. Google. As an American kid I think Dickens will leave him cold. Good characters and a great plot from any genre is fine. He did live in Germany from 2-8 so has lived in different cultures. As we will be reading, plus possibly his 16 yr old sister (although during the school year she is likely to have too much homework) please suggest a good crowd pleaser.

Thanks in advance and very interested to hear your suggestions. Classic American novels might be a good idea. I thought of The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison but thought that could be too dark for a 13 yr old. I enjoyed Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. Some books that come to mind have content that is not necessarily appropriate or interesting to a 13 yr old ( he was 13 in June).

Eragon is not particularly great literature or even a desperately good book, but it is very readable and it was written by a teenage boy so is a good way to show what literacy can do for teenage boys.

Op is not being snobby about audio books. Listening is not the same thing as reading.

The goal is not to know more stories.

Moon fleet is new to me can you tell me about it Fenella? I know Treasure Island has lots of "shiver me timbers!!" but I think it would be a great read aloud, it's very atmospheric.

Hi OP, it's an interesting idea and I wish you luck with it. I don't get why you are so quick to dismiss books set outside America or in a different era though, surely that is part of the joy of reading to transport yourself to a different time and place?

I think this is a fantastic idea and it's nice to hear how invested you are in you DS improving his skills. Like you said, it's not about not liking audio books, it's the fact he won't take anything from that.
LOTR is a brilliant idea, and because it's quite an involved novel it will be great to read aloud as you can't skip parts.

Animal farm is good for discussing things. You might want to brush up on your Russian revolution history though. It is quite short and language not too challenging. It is an allegory.

80 days around the world has slightly more challenging language but lots of opportunities to discuss how life has changed and stereotypes.

To kill a mockingbird might open up some discussion points.

Oh and you are massively missing out by watching the Harry Potter films rather than reading them first. Only yesterday the dc were moaning about how much of the story was missed out. Not quite such a discussion point book though.

Moonfleet is great! It’s got a similar vibe to treasure island - it’s about a orphaned boy of 13 who runs foul of smugglers and finds himself in search of a lost diamond. Along the way there’s murder and intrigue, robbery, shipwrecks.... there’s a better description here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonfleet

That sounds great Fenella, Eragon is new to me.

itsboiledeggsagain thank you. His school does extensive testing twice each year which breaks down reading into something like 12 parts and they felt he needed improvement. They also set individual goals for all students and as his math and science are strong they obviously want to raise the bar. I'm surprised at the reaction to a family reading together. Quite sad really . If we all watched Love Island together every night would it get the same response?

Why are people suggesting audio books ?
The boy needs to improve his reading, it’s in the op.

Mark Twain!!! Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer are super for that age. Graham Greene - Our Man in Havana.

For more current fare: Sourdough and Mr. Penumbra's 24 hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
All the John Green novels.
All the Jonas Jonasson novels
Note: All of the above will also be enjoyable for the adults in the house.

PS. The thing I regret the most was stopping family reading around that age because my ds got very sick and was in residential treatment and we just couldn't keep it up. My father read to our family every night after dinner until I went off to University.

Oh get away from the classics, don’t kill reading for him now! Get him some good modern literature. I recommend ‘Orphan, Monster, Spy’ by Matt Killeen’s which was shortlisted for the last Costa prize. Set in Germany during WWII about a Jewish girl who goes undercover in a nazi boarding school. ‘Killer T’ is the new Robert Muchamore - his Cherub series is easy reading for teens, Killer T is a bit more sophisticated IMO. The Gone series by Michael Grant is popular with teens.

Personally I think reading aloud will absolutely kill any book. When you are that age you can read quicker than someone will read out loud and it will be frustrating. Plus unless you and your husband are skilled orators you won’t do justice to the voices, accents etc. I see your point about audible books and his engagement but as someone who loves them, I can tell you that a bad narrator can kill a book stone dead.

If you find him something good to read, he’ll read it.

I understood what OP means about audiobooks and the difference between reading and listening.

Some alternative suggestions:

Maybe shorter works - novels, especially something like Lord of the Rings, will take weeks if not months to read aloud. Some of Conan Doyles' Sherlock Holmes stories are actually quite short.

Teen books: there are a lot of good books written for that age that are interesting for adults too (the level of language is adult, it's just the content is aimed at that age level, plus they are shorter so you get through them quicker). I went through a phase of exploring them via my local library and enjoyed Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl (but not the second one), Joseph Delaney's Spook's series, and some of Charlie Higson's Young Bond (which was interesting to compare and contrast with Alex Ryder (another child spy series) which I thought was rubbish, although I only read one). This could be an opportunity for the whole family to discover books that weren't around when they were young teens.

I recently discovered in my library a series called Quick Reads, which is aimed at inexperienced adult readers although that's not why I'm suggesting them. They are very short, around 100 pages, so you would get through one quickly, and written by a variety of authors (some of whom I recognised as 'proper' adult writers) so would be a quick way of exploring different genres. I did come across one which seemed to be written in sentences of no more than 7 words, which I assume was aimed at very inexperienced readers but even something like that would be interesting to compare and contrast, especially for reading aloud as it might turn out to be more successful for that purpose than books with long convoluted sentences that were intended for silent reading and not vocalising (like this sentence for example!).

Do you have a local library that you and DS could visit and browse? One of the skills of a reader is choosing books so it would be a good place to start.

It's a little macabre but my ds enjoyed The Elements of Murder-A History of Poison although he was a little younger when he read it.
And at that age he enjoyed: Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money by Nathaniel Popper

He has read Harry Potter, he would rereading them. They read Animal Farm and To Kill a Mockingbird at school. I am definitely not against any books set in other eras or outside the states. It's more that as a Brit, although I've read a lot of American classics, I'm sure there is literature I am unaware of. Some of the most popular Classics in schools here I hadn't heard of until we moved here. Also, I am looking for hopefully a book that would appeal to all of us.

BTW some of my kids favorite audiobooks as kids were by EE Nesbitt, who I somehow never was aware of growing up. Also E. Eager Half Magic (which was one of my favs).

There's always The Catcher in the Rye which I hated, but which seems to be loved by teenage boys of every era.

SofiaAmes your dad is my

Yes, I was trying to remember The Catcher in the Rye, I think there might be some serious sexism in that book which we could discuss when he's 16 but 13 it might be a bit OTT and heavy handed. Hopefully this should be fun and NOT like school.

Kickingastick I hear you about classics that why I'm looking for suggestions that are new or I'm not aware of. Books that are modern classics are considered so for a reason however, some of my best reads have been from the modern American classics section. He really liked The Outsiders for example which was written by a teenage girl.

What part of the USA are you in?
One of the last books I read to the kids before ds went into residential treatment was Huckleberry Finn. It brought up lots of great discussions, including a huge fight between my dc's over whether I should read the N word as it was written in the book, or substitute it out.

Cool. Well my first two suggestions were both published within the last year. The Gone series is a bit older. You could also try ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night’ by Mark Haddon, which is a bit older but still ‘modern’.

My advice is to go to your local bookstore and ask there, they will have loads of good advice on new literature.

I read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and the two sequels (sequels have some grown up themes) to my teenage boy and he enjoyed them. Treasure Island went down well and Animal Farm, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies and 1984 (skipped some of it) . Also read A Clockwork Orange to him when he was 14. I had to stop reading soon after he was 14 as he wouldn’t tolerate it, but am glad we got through quite a few of the classics as I don’t think he’d have read them by himself.

John Le Carre - great plots and lots of tension.

Reading aloud really helps to develop understanding and pronunciation which is probably why OP wants to do it with her dc. Presumably he will read too.

My oldest went to silent reading fairly young, which was great because I could concentrate on the younger two, however there are words that she doesn't know how to pronounce because they are irregular. I can't think of an actual example but say naive- she would know the term in speech and have a concept of its meaning but when reading it might be read as 'navy' so she would have two different concepts of the word - which affects her spelling and comprehension. Reading aloud sometimes either me or her helps her to then reintegrate the two terms.

There is no reason why Op's son can't have two bòoks on the go - one shared more challenging family one and a silent reading one.

Ok I'm skipping around and missing some of the comments.Kickingastick I have to disagree with the idea that reading aloud kills books. For a start all of my teens ask me to read with them when they are reading novels for school. We usually get two copies and often they ask me to read as they say it's quicker when I do! The kids in high school get a TON of homework here and his older sibs have been exhausted after sports and HW and asked me to sit down and read a few chapters to get up to speed on their reading and also discuss it with them.

Like at high school they were studying Revolution in history and literature and reading A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens' vocab and cadence can be a challenge for US students. Making sure they comprehend the whole story and historical references helped them, as over here it's common to get random "pop quizzes" to make sure they are keeping up on their reading.

I have no idea if I am a good narrator except my kids ask me to read a lot.
Here is a selection of some of the books they read at school, they need to be able to read well in middle school to handle the amount of books they read in high school.

All the Kings Men Robert Penn Warren
The Chosen Chaim Potok
Frankenstein
Fahrenheit 451
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
The Secret Life of Bees
The Odyssey
Night Elie Wiesel
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Canterbury Tales
Specimen Days Michael Cunningham
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Kite Runner
Into the Wild
Things Fall Apart
Julius Caesar
The Great Divorce