I actually taught this book to a 9th grade Honors English class (a long time ago). This might be a little advanced for him, but it’s a fantastic book. They read Hiroshima that semester, too. They were floored by both.
I love all of these suggestions. My friend’s son, 12 years old, recommended Red Scarf Girl, which is about a girl growing up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It wouldn’t have been something I would have normally picked, but the kid who suggested it said it really affected him and he has a lot in common with my son, so I’m hoping it will be a good reading experience for him.
I bought that one, but I’ve added almost all of the above suggestions to our library wish list. I have a 7 year old boy, too, and every few months, I’ll read a novel that I pick out to both of them. I think Farmer Boy is going to be the next book I pick. We read Where the Red Fern Grows (one of my childhood favorites) this summer and they were completely hooked.
It’s not nonfiction, but it’s historical fiction: what about Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. I listened to it on an audiobook a few years back and IIRC it wasn’t bad. It’s set during the Revolutionary War and tells the story of a 14-year-old boy and various trials and difficulties he overcomes.
I read it in high school, so memory’s kinda fuzzy, but it’s the true story of a young African-American teen from a poverty stricken, violent neighborhood faced with a decision to change his life for the better.
Homer Hickam’s Rocket Boys is a pretty good read. He’s a retired NASA rocket scientist who grew up in a dirt poor coal mining town. As a teenager, he and his buddies got interested in rockets. They designed and built a series of them, learning as they went along. At first, they were just hacking around, blowing stuff up, mostly, but as they progressed they wound up doing serious research, winning first the local and then the state science fairs and earning his way into college.
His father was a superintendent at the mine, so they were a bit better off than some, but were still in very tight circumstances.
Don’t bother to watch the movie, which changed the family relationships considerably.
How about some newspaper articles instead of a book? I am talking about features telling the stories of actual, individual, ordinary children affected by circumstances and events, not the “big picture”-type news that you mention “watching and discussing”.
The newspaper I read (the Chicago Tribune) runs those kinds of pieces all the time, as do most major papers. Follow-up stories, too – sometimes uplifting, sometimes even sadder than the original coverage.