Books for 12yo boy who hates reading!

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Help! Any suggestions?

What does he like? Hobbies? TV?

I struggle to get my 11 year old to read but he has enjoyed all of David Baddiel's children's books.

Warrior cats? They've helped numerous children I know enjoy reading.

Maze Runner

I am number 4

Divergent

and .. I'll have to go through the box of books just shoved under a bed for the rest.

But if you pump any of those into this site

whatshouldireadnext.com

You'all walk away with loads of titles to check out.

DS (at the time about 12) went from virtually reading no fiction to reading quite a bit after I visited the above site and spent a fair bit on second hand books on amazon. A few were rejected after slogging through a few chapters. But loads were hits and were part of a series so that helped sorting out the next batch to buy.

I think I started with The Hunger Games and went from there. Is there a book he has read (or as in our case...or film based on a book) that he liked that you can use as a starting point ?

Alex Rider books?

Alex Rider books

^^DS loved that series.

have had some success starting with more comic based (e.g. Asterix / TinTin) - which gives them a feeling of reading a book, but finding it easier as there are pictures... then move on to others such as Walliams etc.

It is so hard to suggest something but if his reading age is similar to his actual age then
For fantasy I would suggest Garth Nix maybe the seventh tower books for instance one is called The Fall. Also Joseph Delaney Spooks Apprentice or Angie Sage's Septimus Heap Books first one is Magyk.
For gore/ zombie/ vampires there is Darren Shan but I suggest you read a bit first as they are quite gory.
For dispotian futures The Hunger Games/ Divergent / Maze Runner series.
There is the Alex Rider books ( Antony Horowitz) or Young Bond ( Charlie Higson) for spy stories or the young Sherlock books (Andrew Lane).
The Enders game books are good but not the easiest of reads.
You could try something older such as Animal farm by Orwell or The Outsiders by S E Hinton.
Don't forget graphic novels are great but again you need to check the content as many are rather adult.
Asterix and Tin Tin are always good as are Calvin and Hobbs of you just want him to pick something up to get in to the habit.
Other favourites in our house are
Derek Landy's Skullduggery Pleasant series
Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus series
Philip Pulman's His Dark Materials
And
Terry Pratchett of course.

Had one that was an avid reader and one who was a reluctant reader (the older one!). As a bookworm myself as a child I didn't get it and was worried. FIL was a teacher at a prep school and said not to force books on the reluctant reader as it just puts them off.

Try magazines that relate to a sport or hobby eg. Four-Four-Two for a footballer etc. They then get used to reading in smaller chunks. Reluctant Reader then progressed onto autobiographies of footballers etc too.

By the time it came to reading "proper" books for GCSE he was well into the swing of it.

Graphic novels?
Humour/joke books (dd just got 'hilarious exam answers' or similar)
Guinness book of world records
Books based on films eg The Martian
Also, have you tried a kindle to see if he finds reading more enjoyable if he is able to reduce the number of words on the page? (Turns out dd has a visual processing issue and big pages of text she struggles with).

Alex rider series
The enemy series
The unwind series
The cherub series
H.i.v.e series
Gone series (though I hated it lol)
Maze runner
Hunger games

The Bolds series by Julian Clary are funny.

Artemis Fowl series.

Alex Rider series (Anthony Horowitz)

Tom Gates books (Liz Pichon)

Percy Jackson series (Rick Riorden)

Agree with most above. Skullduggery series was the breakthrough into wanting to read more than two pages in one sitting.

DS 12 currently enjoying/recently read
The Boy Who Biked The World
Treasure Hunters series by James Patterson (not horror !)
The Last Wild series by Piers Torday
Diamond Brothers mystery series Anthony Horowitz
Infinity Drake

Dragged him into the library in half-term and he chose a few short books including The Dying Photo. He didn't realise he was in he dyslexia section and online you will see aimed at younger age but he thought it was a good story.

Skulduggery series is brilliant! Don't read the demon road ones they're arse.

Another thing that worked for our reluctant reader was a kindle. She wouldn't read a book that she thought was too long or if the text was too small or dense. With the kindle she didn't know how long a book was and we could increase the text size. It worked wonders.

Thanks for all those suggestions. Will get working on him again.

Absolutely agree re kindles. He is dyspraxic and doesn't like a book because of the weight, or smell, or paper, colour or word size. But he's also not keen on a kindle!! Can't win

Have you considered audiobooks as a way of getting him more interested in books? I had a student once who was similar to your son in that he didn't enjoy reading due to his dyslexia. When I had introduced him to audiobooks he really took to them, so much so, that it had kindled an interest in following along with the actual book in his hand as he listened to the story.

The Bolds are great, larger font and pictures with Mr Bold's bad jokes every other page. They are also very funny - we donated our copies to the school for the library after Dd read them and they have been very popular with the boys.

Hi! I would agree that comics are good, although mine just look at the pictures!! I've started using something called 'trugs', card games that teach reading. Actually quite good fun! Stands for teach reading using games, hope that helps!

Scott Pilgrim

Ds1 was a bit up and down with reading but now at 11, is really getting on with YA books.
He's devouring The Enemy series by Charlie Higson.