Hi there,
I am trying to put some holiday books together for my (very soon) 8 year old boy.
Of course he knows all the Horrid Henry books and some of usual early-reader-want-to-encourage-boys-stuff and I'd really like to get him to read something different now.
He hates football, so the usual football books are a big no-no, otherwise he is very interested in books.
I don't really have to encourage him to read - he reads constantly. However I'm running out of ideas at the moment, particularly as I would like to aim for a bit of quality now rather than yet another poo-alien-style-goo-shooter-underpants-robot-book if you know what I mean.
He loves anything that's rather realistic (such as school stories, but no aliens and robots please) and funny.
We have also tried a few Roald Dahl books and he likes them, also Sally Gardiner and the Ahlberg books with the Gaskitt family - he particularly loves the latter, Sally Gardiner dragged a bit.
Sometimes he happily re-visits books aimed at younger children and even not too openly girly books (such as stories with a girl as protagonist, but nothing obviously aimed at girls like those rows of pink, glittery pony books).
His reading is very fluent but sometimes he doesn't really understand more difficult words or an underlying message (he's autistic but not severly so to put it short).
Sorry for the length of this but maybe it's easier to suggest something with more info.
Hoping for answers