Getting 13 year old back into reading for pleasure

[Towcester]

Son used to read fairly well at primary, usual Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton etc. It became more of a chore over time though. He loves gaming so that has taken over some of the spare time.

Anything you can suggest to get him back into it? Also, any book titles that may light the spark for a renewed love of reading?

He's average I would say at English in school (better at maths) and speaks another language at home.

His interests change regularly but likes gaming, Minecraft, chess, basketball, board games. I should say he loves Manga as well which he reads on his phone but I don't think that will help him so much academically.

Just seeing that reading is the foundation for so much and as he approaches GCSE it might make a difference but don't want it to be a chore since he has a busy life already.

TikTok.
Seriously. DD had entirely stopped reading for about 2 years, but started reading some books based on TikTok recommendations and has not looked back. It helps that some of her friends were also brought back into reading through the same method and they now regularly swap and discuss books.

Thank you, I would never have guessed but yes quite a list comes up when i search for that.

Audiobooks - they are brilliant and expand vocabulary, expression and they learn about storytelling. Alex Rider books are very popular at ours. But Hugh Grant reading A Christmas Carol was also a massive success.

Same happened to my son. He was happy to read lots of books during Primary school, not only the books provided by the school, but we also bought him lots of "non school" books which he'd binge read.

Secondary school reading really turned him off - he hated the way they constantly stopped and analysed every little thing - he said he'd just rather read the book and enjoy it for what it was. It wasn't just the school books, he started losing interest with other books too, he said he'd get side-tracked thinking about sentence structure, themes, grammar, etc which he said sucked the joy out of it.

We actually "solved" it to some extent by down-grading the quality of the books, i.e. searching out books that were really too young for him, completely avoiding award winning books, and mostly avoiding "adult" books, etc. Basically, getting him to take a step back and try to rediscover the simplicity of primary school standard books. It did help, quite a lot and got him back to reading for fun.

But, he never did "get" proper books. He tolerated school reading, rather than enjoyed it. He didn't read a single "set" book for his GCSE years. He just couldn't bring himself to read them properly. Instead, we bought him the "revision" books, such as York Notes, and instead of reading the books, he just "studied" the revision books like any other exam subject. So he learned the themes, conflicts, personalities etc directly rather than reading the books and "discovering" them for himself. It worked, he got a grade 8 at GCSE!

Now he's at Uni, he's started reading again, and has discovered books that he enjoys. I think his secondary school years were just a "blip" because he had no interest in the books he had to "study" and hated the way he was expected to analyse everything, rather than just read for the fun of it.

Has he read things like Hunger Games & the Divergent series?

@Badbadbunny seems similar to my son's journey so far. Get what you mean about taking a step back. He would happily read diary of a wimpy kid. tbf I can see how they are funny but not much help for GCSE etc.

@TeenDivided hunger games was possibly the last book he read without any encouragement. Will have a look at the divergent series since this seems to be the same genre.

Thanks