Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Top Ten Books for Reluctant Readers

Today is Tuesday and that means it's Top Ten day over at The Broke and the Bookish!  Head on over there to check out all the amazing top ten lists.  Today's topic is Top Ten Books I’d Hand To Someone Who Says They Don’t Like to Read.  I think this is especially relevant for kids/teens because there are plenty of young people who haven't yet discovered how magical reading can be because they associate it with the drudgery of school work.  Here are some books to change their minds:
  • Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick – because it is so unique and easily read in a short time, with more than half of its pages illustrations.
  • Icecore by Matt Whyman - for reluctant teen male readers, with lots of fast-paced action.
  • Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater – for fans of the Twilight movies, with plenty of romance and a plot that pulls you in.
  • Alibi Junior High by Greg Logsted – action, suspense, real-life middle school, plus a nice dose of humor.
  • Amy & Rogers Epic Detour by Morgan Matson – for teen girls, with romance, a good story, plus a travelogue-type scrapbook to keep things interesting.
  • Wake by Lisa McMann – for teens who like a dose of the supernatural, a quick read with short, easy-to-read chapters and plenty of suspense.
  • Unwind by Neal Schusterman – a gripping novel about a creepy future, with likable characters and lots of action.
  • Boom! By Mark Haddon – for reluctant male middle-grade readers who like action, outrageous silliness, and plenty of humor.
  • The Shadow Thieves by Anne Ursu – for kids who liked The Lightning Thief movie.
  • Charlie Bone series by Jenny Nimmo – for fans of the Harry Potter movies; all I can say is that my own reluctant middle-grade reader read the entire series!

So, those are my choices.  What are your top picks for kids or teens who consider themselves non-readers?

5 comments:

rockyriverteenlibrarian said...

Great choices! I totally agree with Wake and Amy and Roger-I loved those books! Here is my list for reluctant teen readers http://wp.me/pzUn5-Pd

Sue Jackson said...

Those were favorites of mine, too - glad you agree!

Colleen said...

Great list too! I've been meaning to read Wake - the librarian at the high school where I teach has been saying it's fantastic all school year. I had lots of luck with the Charlie Bone series when I taught middle school as well.

Thanks for visiting my site!

Heidi said...

Great picks! I love that you picked books for kids who liked certain movies, but not the books those movies were based off of. I think a lot of people don't like to bother reading books after they see a movie, they can be boring when you know what's coming, but reading something similar is perfect!

Mandroid said...

While I've heard of Wonderstruck, Wake and Shiver, I haven't read any of these books. Some of them sound very interesting, particularly Unwind. Thanks for stopping by WFTM!

Leslie
http://greatbooksforkidsandteens.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-ten-books-for-reluctant-readers.html?showComment=1328661650518
greatbooksforkidsandteens.blogspot.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-15
120382
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:JGGBR3VDW2MMTDQWHDGVI3OR53I5N3GO
<urn:uuid:34ab16a5-8c55-4e98-bdf7-fd8a9cade906>
2014-04-16T04:13:34Z
74.125.29.132
sha1:IYV3EFQLJUZLVNH3DPSSIPNIHO4CI4J5
<urn:uuid:43bd5483-0bed-4352-be4c-9690293fef81>
http://greatbooksforkidsandteens.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-ten-books-for-reluctant-readers.html?showComment=1328661650518
length
response
<urn:uuid:cf3da8a3-2779-45fd-ba66-5c6f061846a7>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-15
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for April 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf