<p>I LOVE that Phantom Tollbooth book! And so did my kids! My kids also liked the make your own mystery books. And they read a ton of Hardy Boys books as well.</p>
<p>There are a couple of websites with good reviews of current books: kidsreads.com and teenreads.com You might subsribe (emails are once a month I think). They give fairly through reviews, so you can judge content as well as level. The book “Some of my Best Friends are Books” has good lists, too. </p>
<p>The Sisters Grimm series is a new one that was pretty well liked by my now middle schooler who’s fav book series is FableHaven. Brendon Mull who wrote Fablehaven has other series (some of which are very popular but none my kid has taken to).</p>
<p>If you want a nonfiction book, Three Cups of Tea was one of my favorite books. I read it in third grade, and it really taught me a lot about the conditions people are in. However, the book does deal a bit with Middle-Eastern politics (mostly Taliban and Al-Qaeda; but it’s pretty interesting). Nothing really inappropriate. </p>
<p>I honestly don’t remember most of the books I read back then, however. And I was a girl, so there were quite a few books that were tailored towards me/I didn’t mind reading (like Anne of Green Gables and Little Women–both are great books, but I doubt boys would want to read them).</p>
<p>D loved the Redwall series. My Side of the Mountain was one of my all time favorites but I could never interest either of the children in it. I found the falcon fascinating. </p>
<p>@emeraldkity4 Actually, I am. My sister had gotten a copy from a Model United Nations conference at UC Berkeley, and since I had nothing else to read, I read it. I know there’s been controversy about Greg Mortensen, but I still love the book.</p>
<p>Agree with Emerald Kitty regarding three cups of tea. Very disappointing what he did and there are far better choices of things to read.</p>
<p>To the OP: Consider The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper. The first book is called Over Sea, Under Stone. Love these books, but they do jump around a bit in time. Definitely for deeper thinkers.</p>
<p>For nonfiction, anything by David Macaulay. Examples: “The Way Things Work” or “Castle.”</p>
<p>I have to disagree with one of the suggestions above: Wicked by Gregory Maguire is not age-appropriate for 9-year old 4th graders. There’s just too much profanity and sex. Maguire himself has said that he intended the book for adults. There’s often confusion where Maguire is concerned because he wrote so many children’s books before the Wicked quartet.</p>
<p>Mom24boys, have your boys read The Underland Chronicles? The series starts with Gregor the Overlander. Very popular at our house!</p>
<p>I don’t remember any sex, but it’s been a while since I read it.( I also am losing my memory for books)
In that case I with draw my suggestion!
I also liked the Dark is Rising series, one of my favorites & Imo, superior to Harry Potter.</p>
<p>By the time they finish Redwall, they will be in 6th or 7th grade and perhaps ready for The Once & Future King, an ( The) Arthurian novel by T. H. White.</p>
<p>I liked reading Edgar Rice Burroughs at that age (Tarzan, and lots of others)–they may be too violent for some peoples’ tastes, but I liked them a lot. I second the suggestion of Asimov. Heinlein’s “juveniles” are really good, but be aware that many of his other books are not for kids at all. John Christopher’s Tripods Trilogy is good, also.</p>
<p>I have tried the Underland Chronicles several times and will continue to try and get them to read it, I have a feeling once one starts they will race through them.</p>
<p>@Emeraldkity4 If I can get them to start Redwall it will not last until 6th grade, if 4th grade is anything like 3rd (I hope not) they will spend 3 plus hrs a day reading in school because they will have finished their work and are waiting for others. At least this yr, they are finally allowing them to go 2 yrs ahead in math instead of 1, so that should take care of the 45 minutes of reading a dau they were doing in math.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The guys will find their own stuff now that they’re old enough. Talk to a librarian in your public library and turn them loose. There’s a lot of value in finding what you want to read. I loved that freedom. Kids love freedom.</p></li>
<li><p>Most “adult” books aren’t really that adult if you stick to historical and genre novels. There are many series about the Civil War and nearly all have that romantic tinge (Southern officers who play chess). Science fiction is a huge area, from the ultra-romantic stuff like Dune (which I read in one day at age 10) through all the shelves of all that nonsense. Only a few books will be “too much” and the guys will simply put those down. Another area is Westerns: shelves full of everything from Louis L’Amour and Max Brand. Westerns aren’t as popular these days but man there are a lot of those books. An example of supposed adult writing that isn’t is most of James Michener (after Bridges at Toko-Ri and Sayonara). The books feel more and more over time as though they were written off note cards - which they basically were - but the early to middle ones are cool, romanticized versions of the past. I enjoyed The Source as a kid. </p></li>
<li><p>Most of the classics need to wait because it’s hard to appreciate their language and finesse. Example: I read Sherlock Holmes when I was a kid and didn’t enjoy them but loved the same stories when I was an adult. I can’t imagine reading Thackeray as a kid. </p></li>
<li><p>Having had 2 voracious readers of my own, my impression of the modern books is they’re in many ways equivalent to what was written before and sold to adults, except there’s a ton more fantasy. Modern adult fiction is more sexual - thanks John Updike et al - and generally darker and more psychological than when I was a kid. It has also become - thanks Jackie Susann, Harold Robbins et al - more bluntly sensational tabloid. So to me much of the bifurcation has been that the adult market has shifted and much of the writing that was formerly adult has become “teen” and “young adult”, etc. This is a large topic so I’ll stop here.</p></li>
<li><p>Add in bits of something “hard” to show it isn’t hard at all. I used to read certain Shakespeare plays out loud with my kids. Even a few pages a day made the plays go fast. They realized that MacBeth is an action adventure with tons of violence. One of my favorite things growing up was reading my dad’s poetry books out loud. Just a bit of Auden and you think about language. Don’t have to understand every bit, just get the sense of enjoyment. I used to pull out Gerard Manley Hopkins and read “The Windhover”. </p></li>
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<p>I asked my 20 year old son, and some of his favorites in elementary/middle school that haven’t been mentioned here were The Keys to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix, the Inheritance cycle (Eragon, etc.) by Christopher Paolini and His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Also, like many others here, he loved the Redwall series and was really excited every time a new one would come out.</p>