Mr. Star Wars finishes 7th grade in two days. He has always been a voracious reader and reads at a high level. It has been a challenge this year to keep books in the pipeline that have (mostly) appropriate content for a middle school kid because he is at a place where he can read books intended for an adult audience. Since he is a boy, he gave the polite pass to some of my standby recommendations for middle and high school students (Celia Garth by Bristow and Life as We Knew It by Pfeffer).
I hesitate to classify books as “boy” or “girl”, but it is just a fact that boys typically read books with boy main characters, and girl readers tend to be less gender specific. We hit on some titles that were highly enjoyable. Most fall in the dystopian category because that is such a hot genre right now. We also found several that are spy/secret mission style books, which are en vogue right now too. All have boy central characters.
High Reading Level
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
- The House of the Scorpion and sequel by Nancy Farmer
- The Martian (some bad language) by Andy Weir
- Cherub series by Robert Muchamore
- When the Legends Die by Hal Borland
- Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
- Cloak of the Light series by Chuck Black
Average Reading Level
- Beneath and Above by Roland Smith
- Peak by Roland Smith
- The Bodyguard series by Chris Bradford
- Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz
- Crossover series by Kwame Alexander
- Things Not Seen series by Andrew Clements
- Loot series by Jude Watson
- Ranger’s Apprentice and Brotherband series by John Flanagan
- Conspiracy 365 series by Gabrielle Lord
- The False Prince trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen
- Knightley Academy series by Violet Haberdasher
On our middle school summer “to read” list
- Freakling and Psi Chronicles by Lana Krumwiede
- The Neptune Project by Polly Hollyoke (girl main character!)
- The Ability by M.M. Vaughan
- Ghost and companion books by Jason Reynolds
- The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (need at least one classic)
As a parent and a teacher, how do you approach the language and sexual references in Ready Player One?
As a teacher, I probably would not teach it to a class unless I knew my community really well (or sent a letter ahead of time getting parent consent). As a parent, I read it first, and the language and few sexual references did not stick out to me, so I knew my son would probably glide over them since I felt they were not essential to the story. He had already read The Martian, which I think has more bad language. It is definitely a middle school (or higher) book, and you need a mature reader.
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I feel like you shouldn’t think girls cant read these books stop using gendered terms
Girls can absolutely read these books. As I mentioned in the post, based on my experience in the classroom, girls will pick up all kinds of books, but boys will be more hesitant about a book with a girl main character.