Book List Older Boys
Castle Diary: Information and a story about life in a medieval castle that your boy can keep coming back to and can lead to many other books in the medieval time period.
The Fun Knowledge Encyclopedia: Small bites to read and lots of variety and awesome pictures. The perfect book for a boy who doesn’t want to read. Draw them in with the pictures and they stick around for the education and reading practice.
Imagination Station: If you are familiar with Magic Treehouse you’ll understand the gist of these as they are a Christian version. I find they are written much better though. The series is about a couple of kids go back in time and learn about that period and they learn a life lesson. It is a great introduction to chapter books or makes an exciting but not scary bedtime read aloud.
Weapon: A Visual History of Arms and Armour: Boys usually like guns. And tanks. And swords. I managed to keep any weapon paraphernalia out of my house for quite a while but they still found sticks and made lego guns. So I bought this book. This book has some amazing pictures of historical artifacts and, even though they weren’t reading yet, my boys would flip through this book for ages. As they developed reading skills, they started to take in the facts and, at this point, my boys know way more about history (battles, culture, rise and fall of kingdoms etc) than I do. All because I hooked them with pictures of weapons.
Diary of an 8-bit Warrior: Minecraft + graphics + intriguing character = the first chapter books my 8yo ever read. He started truly reading earlier this year and his 11yo brother loved these books so much that he figured he would give them a try. He jumped from barely reading to reading this whole series of chapter books. I wasn’t about to tell them they were too advanced for him. These were lent by a friends who’s son had very little interest in reading but loved these books. If your boy is into Minecraft, these are a sure winner. They look to be a bit on the younger end but even my husband enjoyed reading them aloud for bedtimes (so the 6 year old could hear the story his brothers raved about) so they can be fun for older kids as well.
Ralph S. Mouse: Another cute story about a mouse who drives a motorcycle. Clean and interesting enough to capture a boy’s attention.
Virtual reality: This book comes with an app that allows children to really get into the topic, whether it be looking into space or peering underwater at ocean creatures. Younger kids will enjoy this as well but may need help and older kids will have a lot of fun with it.
A Pioneer Story: This is so much more than just a story about a pioneer family. It has activity ideas that will help your children connect more with pioneer times. It has life lessons. It can help them develop an appreciation for the advanced technological time we live in. And it can offer creative ideas for your children to get outsdie in the great outdoors. Don’t tell my kids but this but it will be under our tree because we’ve borrowed it from the library so many times it just doesn’t make sense not to have it on our own shelves.
A Way Through the Sea: A gentle introduction into the lives of children during WW2. We were gifted a copy by a friend who had them growing up but I believe they are currently out of print. I normally prefer my boys to have hard copies in hand but this was such a great series that I linked to the kindle version. We have a tablet with kindle and, as I was looking up this link, I learned that there are 8 books in the series, not 5. So I plan to get the rest of the series for my boys sometime soon.
The Chronicles of Narnia: No book list would be complete without this series. Some of the books (particularly The Silver Chair) are little more intence but most of the series is great for boys. And adults. I have to be honest and say that I bought these for myself and it was just a perk that the boys are enjoying them too. But with the action and adventure in them, who could blame them?
The Prince Warriors: These books look intimidating to a new reader but are a good enough story that they’ll plug through. They are fantasy but with an allegorical theme, similar to Chronicles of Narnia. The kids go into a fantasy world where they fight evil and earn their armour and weapons. Each piece of armour represents a character trait that they need to develop before they earn it. They are well written, the story is a page turner and it has a good ending.
Dragon Keepers Chronicles Series: This is another fantasy series with good lessons. But this time it involves dragons. If your kids like How to Train a Dragon, they’ll love these as well. Each character gets more than one dragon in this series and they can harness the powers of each as required. The kids save villages and fight against the bad guy who is trying to get a dragon army to defeat the dragon keepers (sound familiar?). Another series with what could be seen as an allegorical theme, similar to Chronicle of Narnia. It was a pleasant surprise to find a series about dragons with themes that I feel good about introducing to my children.
Wartime Farm: This is originally a BBC TV mini-series (which you can find on YouTube) that has been expanded on and turned into a book. It has a bit of history and a bit of homesteading-type stuff. The people live for a year as if they were in the 1940s. They eat according to rations at the time, plant and harvest according to agricultural methods, and live with only conveniences found during that time period. BBC has also done TV mini-series with matching books on Edwardian Farm, Tudor Monastary Farm, and Victorian Farm. We have watched all the series at least once and, after he read the books, my 11yo filled us in on so many more details and factoids that enhanced the show for us.
Who Was Series: There are so many books in this series about a huge variety of famous people. There was also a show on Netflix that was full of silliness and songs but also nice facts (maybe it is still there?). This series looks like it is quite juvenile but I found the text in the books was a bit much for my younger ones. The 8yo and 11yo have borrowed them from the library and managed to glean quite a bit more information from them. Learning about real people is something that captures the attention of most boys. Usborne had a good youth level biography series as well (beautiful and hard cover with color picutres) but they are quite a bit more expensive than these. You can get a lot more people introduced to your boys with more affordable books.