# Non-Fantasy or Sci-Fi books for a young adult reader? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 3, 2009, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427 "2009-10-03T02:28:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Tristan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tristan/32/18058_2.png) [@Tristan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tristan)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427/1 "2009-10-03T02:28:31Z")
For reasons that are a bit to complicated to go into here, I need to find some reading material for my son. He is almost 12, but is reading at around a 9th grade reading level. He loves fantasy, and I’ve gotten him into reading my Heinlein juveniles, but some things have come up and it’s kind of important that we find him some entertaining books to read that are based in… you know… reality. Suggestions? TIA ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Skeezix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/aca169/32.png) [@Red\_Skeezix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Skeezix)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427/2 "2009-10-03T04:30:13Z")
By reality, you mean non-fiction? Or fiction not involving impossible plot devices? Assuming the latter, there are a lot of classics, and 9th grade is when you start to get into the good ones. Then it just depends on taste. Great Expectations All quiet on the western front Old man and the sea Red Badge of Courage To Kill a Mockingbird A tree grows in Brooklyn Catcher in the Rye ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427/3 "2009-10-03T17:14:55Z")
9th grade? How about Alexandre Dumas’ books? Is he interested in history? If so, Colleen McCulloch has a series of books set in ancient Rome going from Marius and Sulla through to the death of Julius Caesar. Then there’s Barbara Tuchman’s book, The Calamitous 14th Century. He might also enjoy Tom Clancy’s earlier works. Stop at Executive Orders - after that they’re crap. Just be sure that he takes the politics as as fictional as the characters. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427/4 "2009-10-03T17:40:28Z")
Maybe _The Chosen_, or\* Of Mice and Men\*. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427/5 "2009-10-03T18:10:14Z")
> [@Tristan](#): > > He is almost 12, but is reading at around a 9th grade reading level. > > He loves fantasy, and I’ve gotten him into reading my Heinlein juveniles, but some things have come up and it’s kind of important that we find him some entertaining books to read that are based in… you know… reality. > > Suggestions? Nero Wolfe mysteries should work pretty well for that reading level: approachable, entertaining, and “retro” isn’t a bad compromise between fantasy and reality: solving crimes in the '40s, riding in a roadster and carrying a revolver and thus and such. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427/6 "2009-10-03T18:13:21Z")
Have you seen the [Book Series For 12 Yr Old Boy](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=534175) thread? Some of the good suggestions therein are non-fantasy/SF—let us know if you need us to point out which ones they are. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427/7 "2009-10-04T01:39:01Z")
I’ll repeat some suggestions from that thread: Dick Francis, Louis L’Amour, Jim Kjelgaard, and Jack London. Not everything is believable, but it’s generally within the realm of plausibility! ---
**Author:** ![Tenar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@Tenar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tenar)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427/8 "2009-10-04T02:21:49Z")
I know he’s only 12, but if you think he can handle it, how about some gripping, manly stuff? I know Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer can be pretty grim (and is non-fiction), but it isn’t any more depressing than most of the classics mentioned. (I absolutely LOVE Great Expectations, but I don’t think I would have enjoyed it at twelve, even though I was a voracious reader at an advanced reading level. I doubt that I would have seen the humor in it at all, and that’s my favorite part now. And Catcher in the Rye? Maybe I’m just a cretin, but I STILL don’t see what all the fuss is about.) What is our son into, besides (presumably) fantasy and SF? If he is the thoughtful type, and has patience with old fashioned language, he _might_ enjoy a reprint of “Ragged Dick” by Horatio Alger. Yes, I know it’s a weird suggestion, but I think it’s fun to read for a variety of reasons: Dick’s sense of humor, the discovery that there were moralistic Juvenile Series “way back then,” and for showing that, as the saying goes, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” If he enjoys history, by any chance, he may really get into learning about the life of the NYC street boy of the 1800s. It’s a long shot, probably, but I’ll keep on stumping for Alger books until I find a fellow fan, even if I have to create one myself! I’m female, but I truly loved Alistair McLean’s manly books (The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, etc.,) _way_ back when I was twelve, so I would second the vote for stuff like Tom Clancy, who I guess is the present day equivalent. (Are McLean’s books still available? Some of them were crap, but some of them were really great. I’m sure your son wouldn’t understand the WW2 and Cold War background, but then, I didn’t understand any of that stuff either, and I LOVED the books anyway.) God, I AM showing my age. Let me think about this some more, and see if I can’t come up with something less than a million years old. Oh, wait – does he enjoy mysteries? Biographies? There are a lot of good possibilities out there in those categories, I suspect. (Oh, wait – I just re-read upthread a bit. I second the vote for Nero Wolfe. ) ---
**Author:** ![Pray\_for\_peace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Pray\_for\_peace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pray_for_peace)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427/9 "2009-10-04T03:11:15Z")
**A Separate Peace** and **The Chocolate War** – Both are coming of age stories about teens in a prep school setting. These were favorites of mine (even though I went to public schools). ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427/10 "2009-10-05T19:35:47Z")
Are historical books okay, or do they need to be contemporary? Historicals I like: Catherine Called Birdy (Cushman), Carry On, Mr. Bowditch (Latham) and Johnny Tremain (Forbes) – these might honestly be just under his reading level but are still awfully good and which I still enjoy as an adult. How gritty YA do you want? Chris Crutcher writes books about high school boys who are into sports and who face (or whose friends face) daunting problems (death, abuse, parental issues, drugs, sex) – ok, that made it sound kind of grim but they are really full of optimism and hope (Crutcher is a therapist in real life) and I really like them a lot. Stotan is my favorite; Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, Whale Talk, Ironman are all good bets; Crazy Horse Electric Game, Sledding Hill, and Deadline in my opinion are much less good. In this same general category (contemporary boys with problems)… The Moves make the Man (Brooks) I remember being kind of interesting; Paul Zindell also wrote some quirky books about teenagers. In general ALA Best Books tend to be pretty good (I think a lot of the above books were ALA). Cynthia Voigt has written some interesting books (the Tillerman saga) about a family of kids who have to find their own way. Homecoming is the first one, in which they are basically deserted by their (mentally-ill) mom and make a fairly arduous journey (especially for a bunch of kids) to find their relatives, who don’t want to take them in. Subsequent books deal with them getting re-integrated into society and growing up, along with their grandmother (who has been convinced to take them in). – These, again, are MUCH better than I’m making them sound. I just read these recently and I think they are amazingly good, though I’m not actually sure I would have appreciated them as much as a teenager (Voigt is never quite where you think she is, and she always has interesting things to say about the world). I’d preview Chocolate War before giving it to your son – Cormier is a little, um, twisted for my taste, though I did read him when I was about your son’s age. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427/11 "2009-10-05T20:48:22Z")
Good Lord, there’s a zillion directions to go in. Mysteries have already been suggested. I like Sherlock Holmes, myself, but there are lots of others, like the aforementioned Nero Wolfe. How about Sea Stories? Cecil Scott Forester (Not just the Horatio Hornblower Series, but lots of others), Patrick O’Brian, Alexander Kent… My 12 year old daughter reads a lot of reality-based books that probably wouldn’t interest him (The Candy Apple series, Meg Cabot’s Princess Diary series and other Girl fare), but some of the others – the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Holes, the L8R G8R series – might. She goes for humor. How about Explorer stuff – the books of Roy Chapman Andrews, or Gorgon, or a book I recently read on the hunt for the Coelacanth. I loved Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki and Aku-Aku at that age. You could always get him The Straight Dope books. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427/12 "2009-10-05T20:49:47Z")
> [@](#): > > A Separate Peace I Hated, Hated, Hated, Hated, Hated this book. And I had to read it for two Separate Classes. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-fantasy-or-sci-fi-books-for-a-young-adult-reader/512427/13 "2009-10-05T21:12:08Z")
> [@](#): > > How about Sea Stories? Cecil Scott Forester (Not just the Horatio Hornblower Series, but lots of others), Patrick O’Brian, Alexander Kent… _Captains Courageous_, _The Sea Wolf_…