Adventure stories to read to 11yo

[MinnieMountain]

DS has requested a book about adventures in South America or Africa for the next book I read to him. I’m stumped.

He loved King Solomon’s Mines and the Katherine Rendell book about children getting lost in the Amazon. I found KR a bit “easy” to read to him IYSWIM so no more of hers.

Well, The Explorer is based on this - wonderful but also dated - book: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Adventure. Which could work very well read aloud.

Lord of the Flies or Heart of Darkness or Riddle of the Sands

There's the Willard Price books, that are quite dated. I'm sure there's an "African Adventure" among that set.

Riddle of the Sands is so good!

39 steps is still very readable but there's 10 pages of appalling (but skippable) antisemitism in it.

Kim - as in Kipling's - is, from memory, a lot less dodgy. Not a Kipling apologist, but he's a much more complex and interesting writer than some of his fans would make you think.

'If any question why we died/ Tell them, because our fathers lied.' wasn't written by a tubthumping imperialist.

I think you can download Riddle of the Sands as a pdf/word because it's out of copywrite.

Slightly different track, but The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, or Sherlock Holmes perhaps.

How about the Enid Blyton series The River of Adventure etc?

Or maybe The Hobbit?

Yes there was. I've still got my childhood copy with a picture of a lion on the front cover.

How about this? It's the true story of a teenage girl who survived a plane crash in the Amazon. I haven't read it so not sure how much an 11 year old would enjoy it but I'm quite familiar with the story and it's very gripping.

amzn.eu/d/eLRLbQF

Treasure Island if you haven't already read it.

Not your chosen setting, but I’d really recommend this book - it’s a “young adult” (ie minus the swearing and somewhat condensed) version of the first volume of a trilogy by Jason Lewis - he completed the first human powered navigation of the globe.

https://amzn.eu/d/7LQujAa

He’s an absolute nutter, idealist, unprepared. The book starts with a crocodile attack and pans back to “hmm, how did I get here?” He and a friend basically pedaloed across the Atlantic. I read it to my son at a similar age and he loved it. It’s not got the usual “arrogant motivational army man” tone that this sort of thing sometimes has. Highly recommend!

At his age I was loving reading all the Gerald Durrell “travelling round the world and collecting animals for zoos and conservation” books. Haven’t reread for years and I suspect some of the sentiment may be a bit old fashioned sounding to modern ears, but they were brilliant adventures and so well written.

Thank you everyone.

I’ve bought Lord of the Flies and I’m going to work through lots of the other suggestions. I really like the look of the Willard Price books.

I love Kipling @SalmonWellington . I bought an anthology on my Kindle and read most of them to DS.

The Skullduggery Pleasant series are brilliant! Quite dark, but brilliant and are excellent books to read together - they're certainly an adventure just not the 'treasure island' rye adventure! I think I enjoyed them as much as DS did!

Obviously, mine is a suggestion for after he has his SA/Africa books - which I can't help with!