Post by ellipses84 on Jul 29, 2015 13:25:30 GMT -5
I'm looking for summer reading recommendations for a 15 year old boy. He has a learning disability and is not the strongest reader. I know that improving his reading skills would help him in all of his other subjects in school as well. Any genre is fine, whether it's a funny, easy read or something that really made an impression on you as a teen.
What about the Encyclopedia Brown books. I don't know if they would be too easy or not. I don't remember what age they are good for but I used to love them.
Post by dr.girlfriend on Jul 29, 2015 15:54:41 GMT -5
How about the Maze Runner series? Also, think about audiobooks that he can listen to while following along with the text. That helps kids with LD develop reading recognition and vocabulary while still presenting them with material appropriate to their level of general language ability and age rather than "holding them down" to material at their reading level, which may be too simple to keep their interest. You want word-for-word audiobooks, though, not abridged or adapted ones. The organization LearningAlly.com (formerly Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic) is good for providing access to audiotexts for both textbooks and fun reading. His school might have an institutional membership, but if not you can get an individual membership.
Some recent, popular books with the boys in my library (my library serves 6-12th graders). They are all YA and fairly easy to read in addition to being fun:
Maze Runner series
Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson (as well as the sequel, Firefight): scifi series where super villains are real. Lots of action and adventure.
Winger by Andrew Smith: Boarding school/coming of age novel about a rugby player who gets into all kinds of antics. Full of dirty jokes with a bit of heart and enough tragedy to make you cry. I find that John Green mostly appeals to girls at my school and this is like a boy alternative to John Green. Be warned that it has a lot of juvenile jokes about sex and some liberal swearing in it, in case that bothers you.
The Living by Matt de la Pena: Disaster/survival adventure full of action. I personally didn't enjoy this one, but I could not keep my two copies on the shelves at work. The boys loved it.
Ashfall by Mike Mullon: Post apocalypse survival story about a kid who is stranded away from his family when the yellowstone super volcano erupts. He has nothing but his martial arts skills and his wits to help him survive and find his family as he facing starvation, freezing, and mayhem (cannibals!). It's an action page turner, though it's pretty violent with gore. Kids are often intimidated by its length (almost 500 pages), but it's an easy and quick read. There are two more books in the series.
Audiobooks (check your local library for free downloads!) might be a good way to engage him as well. Also, at that age, I often recommend nonfiction for reluctant reader boys.
Post by ellipses84 on Jul 29, 2015 21:42:50 GMT -5
Great recs and tips! I'm checking out the summaries on Amazon and I'm going to let him pick what he wants to read first. My DH has a kindle he never uses anymore, so he can borrow that, which he'll probably be more excited about than reading a real, paper book. He's old enough for some adult content, but reading younger, easier material is ok too because it boosts his confidence. I think he would enjoy reading biographies about people he admires.
Anecdote alert: My DH was not a strong reader until he was a teenager. That was the point at which his English teacher told him he could read anything he wanted (not just books). He read car magazines and physics types of handbooks. His reading level increased from elementary school level to 12th grade level in one year.
Many teachers will tell you that the more you practice reading, the better reader you will be. Doesn't matter what you read.
If he wants to read books, there were a lots of good suggestions by PPs (I think I'll take some of them myself). If books bore him, perhaps consider encouraging him to pick something (anything) he's interested in.
Anecdote alert: My DH was not a strong reader until he was a teenager. That was the point at which his English teacher told him he could read anything he wanted (not just books). He read car magazines and physics types of handbooks. His reading level increased from elementary school level to 12th grade level in one year.
Many teachers will tell you that the more you practice reading, the better reader you will be. Doesn't matter what you read.
If he wants to read books, there were a lots of good suggestions by PPs (I think I'll take some of them myself). If books bore him, perhaps consider encouraging him to pick something (anything) he's interested in.
This is so true. Reading magazines and other short nonfiction (chapters of handbooks, etc.) is also good practice for college reading too, which is often in short form. I find that shorter nonfiction appeals to a lot of the male high school students I work with. I often try to pitch this idea to the English teachers at my school to include more short nonfiction reading to appeal to these types of readers (since high school English class is so traditionally based around novels and sometimes short stories).
Winger by Andrew Smith: Boarding school/coming of age novel about a rugby player who gets into all kinds of antics. Full of dirty jokes with a bit of heart and enough tragedy to make you cry. I find that John Green mostly appeals to girls at my school and this is like a boy alternative to John Green. Be warned that it has a lot of juvenile jokes about sex and some liberal swearing in it, in case that bothers you.
This book was a hoot. I laughed and cried. It was recommended to me by a colleague, and it was on our teacher bookcase, which meant we could lend it out to specific kiddos but wasn't on the general shelf in the classroom so anyone could grab it. Before it made its way to any students it circulated among quite a few teachers who read it for leisure, not as a possible classroom library book.
Great recs and tips! I'm checking out the summaries on Amazon and I'm going to let him pick what he wants to read first. My DH has a kindle he never uses anymore, so he can borrow that, which he'll probably be more excited about than reading a real, paper book. He's old enough for some adult content, but reading younger, easier material is ok too because it boosts his confidence. I think he would enjoy reading biographies about people he admires.
Also, think about comic books or graphic novels that might be age-appropriate, since there are fewer words per page and the comic panels provide context clues for the written material. Any comic book store staff member should be able to help you out there -- there are Simpsons comic books, for example, or maybe some of these: