This week I’ll be part of a 5 Days of Summer Series and I’m talking about 5 Days of Summer Reading. Each post comes with recommendations for how to choose good books, tips to encourage a love of books, and ideas for how to enjoy reading as a whole family–as well as a book list, so be sure to check them all out!

MONDAY: 5 Days of Summer Reading {For the Homestead}

TUESDAY: 5 Days of Summer Reading {For the Boys}

WEDNESDAY: 5 Days of Summer Reading {For the Girls}

THURSDAY: 5 Days of Summer Reading {For the Reluctant Reader}

FRIDAY: 5 Days of Summer Reading {For the Family}

Our boys are busy.

They’re superheroes.

They’re cowboys.

They’re soldiers, and dragon-slayers, and trailblazers.

And they’re barely readers–the Cowboy is an advanced beginner, but Speedracer isn’t reading at all yet. But books are still a HUGE part of their lives. Here are some ways we’ve found to really help our young boys love books and reading time even though they’re not really bookish, yet. {smile}

Pick Great Books!

Sounds easy, right? Oh, it’s not! We’re looking for “great,” not just “good enough.” What are some of the key characteristics we’re looking for when choosing books for our boys?

• Moral Clarity–That doesn’t have to be Christian (although we like that!), but it does have to be clear who’re the good guys and who’re the bad guys and, while our boys are still so young, I prefer that there’s not too much sympathy for the bad guys.
• Admirable Character–If we’re going to be reading, we like to see characters that exhibit admirable traits for our boys to relate too like perseverance, respect for authority, honesty, and diligence. And the opposites, as well, for illustrative purposes.
• Consequences–For the good guys and bad guys alike. We like our stories to be realistic–everyone makes mistakes and faces hard choices. And there should be consequences, discipline, and reconciliations.
• Action and Adventure–I’m not saying girls don’t like adventure (both myself and our Ladybug certainly do!), I’m just saying that our boys LOVE action and adventure. They thrive on it, it’s like fresh air to them. It fires up their imaginations and sets their little hearts to racing!
• Solutions and Conclusions–We like authentic books that have problems in life and relationships and characters that solve them, fix them, apologize for them, and heal from their mistakes. Right now our boys are a bit young for tragically tortured souls, generational family frictions, and emotionally destructive behavior patterns–and I’m appalled at how much youth fiction contains these endless themes. I’m convinced you can only continually feed yourself that stuff so much before it starts to bitter your outlook!

Have Books Available!

We have fun, graphic DK Readers and Step Into Reading books stashed everywhere. In our bathrooms. In our cars. On our porches. We take them to the doctor’s office and on car trips…it encourages them to read whenever they have free time.

Find Books They Like!

I wrote yesterday about being a book-scavenger. I’m always looking for something that I think will interest our munchkins. I’ve hunted up books on dog-sledding, pony express riders, the Coast Guard, American Indian teepees, beetles…just to fuel their interest in using books to explore the world.

Read To Them!

We like family read-aloud time for a lot of reasons and I’ll talk about it more on Friday, but I think it’s a great way to keep boys engaged in reading and books–especially as early readers. Read books that they can’t read for themselves to challenge them, interest them, and create a backdrop of literature for their other activities. Our boys are perfectly capable of multi-tasking and can follow a story I’m reading while coloring, or playing legos or horses quietly.

Help Them Visualize!

While I’m not a fan of indiscriminate TV, I do like using well-chosen TV and movies to supplement books because they can help the children visualize things they aren’t familiar with when we’re reading chapter books without pictures. We look for the same characteristics in movies that we do in books. Watching Iron Will and Balto was a great fit when Speedracer was on his dog-sledding kick (because there’s certainly nothing around here that would give him a visual of so much snow that you need a sled!). Mr. Fix-It is also great about Googling stuff in our stories for the crew to see. How exciting was it for us to be reading all about the Sager children and the Mr. Fix-It to pop up some actual pictures of the Sager sisters?! It helps feed their imaginations while I’m reading.

Here are some great books we’re enjoying with our boys (and I tried to focus on some of our favorites that I’m surprised not to see on reading lists very often!)…

1. Dogteam, Gary Paulsen. We’re huge Gary Paulsen fans and I was SO excited to scrounge this picture-book treasure at a library book sale while Speedracer was in the middle of his dog-sled fascination. It’s a great introduction for younger readers to Paulsen’s nature adventures! Other great dog-sledding and far north adventures for us this past year were Akiak, Stone Fox, Born to Pull, and two well-worn favorites from my own collection, Gentle Ben and Kavik the Wolfdog.
2. Francis Tucket’s Adventures in the West, Gary Paulsen. These were completely new to me last year and I stumbled across them as a Gary Paulsen fan. They’re totally different from his survival fiction, but great fun and our Cowboy loves them.
3. A Tale of The Western Plains, G.A. Henty. Another western adventure our boys loved.
4. Old Sam: Dakota Trotter, Don Taylor. Another western, and quick read, that my Cowboy adores!
5. Speaking of horse stories, we’ve enjoyed the Black Stallion books together, but the Cowboy is still crazy about Little Black, A Pony by Walter Farley. This old beginning reader book is from my grandparents (and apparently hard to find!) and we’ve read it over and over again for years now.
6. Ranger’s Apprentice and Brotherband Chronicles, John Flannagan. I just read a few of these in the past couple months and I loved them. They are great adventure stories with good guys, bad guys, knights and kings, and castles. Technically they’re considered fantasy, but there’s no magic or witchcraft and almost no spirituality, other than some passing reference to Viking-like paganism. And the main hero characters are young (15-18) and quite admirable. These are great boy books–probably 5th-7th grade for independent readers but my boys are soaking them up out-loud.
7. Scout the Wardog, Piet Prins. I managed to snag this whole series on Clearance from the Vision Forum and have already read half of them myself. They are exciting adventures as well as a great living history resource about WWII.
8. Viking Quest, Lois Walfrid Johnson. Our whole crew enjoyed these books about young 2 young Christian siblings in Ireland that are kidnapped by Vikings. You can get a great deal on all of them on Kindle–and they meet every one of our criteria for great books.
9. Two other series by Lois Walfrid Johnson that are on our list to check out (since we loved Viking Quest so much!) are Freedom Seekers and Northwoods Adventures. I’ve got the first book in each series on our shelf for sometime later this year.
10. Jungle Doctor, Paul White. I was as fascinated by this missionary doctor series as the munchkins were–and it had a great influence on how they view our missionary support at church.
11. Childhood of Famous Americans, Augusta Stevenson. We have several of these and, quite frankly, I wouldn’t mind having every. single. one. They’re a middle elementary reading level (3rd to 6th grade) and cover all the basic history of each person. However; they are also written with an eye for adventure and are not boring to read, even though they’re biographical. Our boys have already enjoyed Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Buffalo Bill.
12. All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot. I know some parents that think these books are too intense for their children, but our kiddos eat these up! These books are so real to us! I have to admit–I like them much more now with our children than I did when I was younger.

Please, share some of your favorite books for boys! Be sure to check out our tips and ideas on reading with girls that are growing up too fast!