Reluctant Reader Books

27/06/2023

Boys are notoriously picky when it comes to finding great books to read. Which is why we compiled a massive list with dozens of titles across multiple genres. Books that appeal to boys and keep them glued to the page. Funny stories, historical fiction, adventure tales, horror stories, fantasy and nonfiction.

Link in bio. Or you can see all our reviews and recommendations at reluctantreaderbooks.com/books-for-reluctant-readers.

21/04/2023

A shoutout to our friends and and their family who are traveling around the country delivering books to kids in every state. They were recently featured in People magazine and on the talk show.

If you haven't heard of the Busload of Books Tour, check it out at www.busloadofbooks.com/.

Haven't read Matthew and Robbi's Cookie Chronicles? Link in bio to read our review of the first three books.

Keep up the great work guys!

17/04/2023

We were asked to put together a guest post on classics that make good summer reads by . Riverwalk Books is a small town bookstore in Lake Chelan, Washington. It has been operating there for over 25 years, supplying locals and tourists with beloved books, toys and literary experiences.

Here are Reluctant Reader Books’s choices for 5 Classics for the Beach:

King Solomon’s Mines covers a lot of familiar territory: hidden treasure, lost cities, African tribes forgotten to time. That’s because Haggard’s protagonist, Alan Quartermain, is the inspiration for Indiana Jones, and Haggard himself the original adventure novelist.

Sherlock Holmes fans may have overlooked Father Brown. If so, that’s too bad. Holmes set the standard, but Chesterton is a brilliant and lively writer whose tales are often darker and more macabre. And while Holmes focuses on a scientific approach to crime, Father Brown solves his cases by way of his deep grasp of human psychology. These stories are not to be missed.

Best known for Treasure Island, Stevenson’s other high-sea adventure is his masterpiece. The novel of a young man kidnapped and put to sea by his evil, inheritance-grabbing uncle, Kidnapped is the peak of 19th Century adventure fiction.

Plain poor Bette survives by the charity of her wealthy relatives. She falls in love, only to find the object of her affections intends to marry her rich cousin. Enraged, Bette dedicates herself to exacting revenge and destroying her benefactors down to the very last member. Few writers wrote of the dark alleys of the soul half as well as Balzac.

Dr. Wortle’s school for girls is endangered when it is discovered that the first husband of his schoolmaster’s wife is not dead as believed. Dr. Wortle must make a choice. The moral code of his society demands he expel the schoolmaster and his wife and leave them to ruin. But his conscience insists he aid and protect two people he believes are fine, upright and innocent. The ensuing struggle is captivating and powerfully moving.

30/11/2022

We've gathered 26 holiday tales together from a wide variety of authors: Charles Dickens, Dr. Seuss, Jack London, Chris Van Allsburg, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Mark Twain and more.

Links to all the stories so you can read them online free. Plus a reader-friendly PDF we created of our personal favorites you can download for free. And we've got lesson plans if you need them.

Happy Holidays!

Below you’ll find a selection of 26 Christmas stories for middle and high school students. They are divided into four sections: Classic Christmas Stories, Modern Christmas Stories, Christmas Ghost Stories, and Christmas Stories for Kids. Each story has a link (READ IT) that will take you to a free...

25/10/2022

Honored to have We Bury the Living in such excellent company. Thank you E Train's World of Books & Wonder!

13/10/2022

A rave review from .get.lit.erature! Thank you for reading We Bury the Living and having such kind things to say.

Goosebumps was definitely the model for the Nevermore series, but we were aiming for something that felt a little fresher and more modern. Luckily that came through!

We love the covers too! A big thanks to for the amazing artwork! His style and brilliant use of color are second to none.

We hope you enjoy Death Cab and The Thirteenth Floor. We’d love to hear what you think of them as well!

12/10/2022

It's 👻 season so our book chat with guest, author and founder of Tyler Miller, definitely had a creepy focus.

Carrie read a classic vampire story. CARMILLA by J. Sheridan Le Fanu is a novella published in 1872 which was 25 years before Bram Stoker published Dracula (1897). Sheridan Le Fanu actually owned a newspaper in Dublin, Ireland that Stoker worked for so they knew and worked with each other. The character of Carmilla is the prototype from which all female and le***an vampires came. If you’ve read Dracula, you can definitely see some of the threads that inspired Stoker from what Sheridan Le Fanu first wrote. For example, the narrator in Carmilla is a young woman named Laura who reminds readers of Lucy Westenra in Dracula. For those interested in early horror, Sheridan Le Fanu also wrote ghost stories which were said to have pushed Victorian boundaries.

Tyler does a mother/son bookclub and they just finished up WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Brontë. While this isn't necessarily horror, it surely hits hard on the gothic elements and heightened drama.

And I (Amy) read WYLDING HALL by Elizabeth Hand. This is a novella about a 1970s rock band who heads to a crumbly old mansion in rural England to record a breakthrough album. But strange things happen and one of the band members disappears. Think a spooky version of Daisy Jones and the Six.

What are you reading this week?

12/10/2022

Got a delightful email from a young fan today. Wanted to share it.

Thank you, Ella, for taking a chance on a scary book!

08/10/2022

It's a so that means another installment of is coming at you!

This week on the podcast we talked with founder of and author of the Nevermore series Tyler Miller about how creepy spooky middle grade books can get reluctant readers to pick up a book.

Tyler's dog Nickleby, named after the Dickens' character Nicholas Nickelby, is an Australian shepherd/blue heeler mix who just wants to help. Maybe even drive the bus? Was he in fact the inspiration for the Greyhound (or should it be Blue Heeler) bus driver in WE BURY THE LIVING that drops Finn and his little sister off at a deserted desolate spot in Nevermore Washington all alone to wait for their extremely creepy aunt and uncle who come in a hearse to pick them up?

To hear our full conversation with Tyler about his books for reluctant readers, find a link in the bio or wherever you listen to podcasts.

08/10/2022

For R.L. Stine, surprise is the secret sauce of middle-grade horror. “Most of children’s literature is very linear,” he says. “You can predict where it’s all going to go. But you can’t do that with ‘Goosebumps.’ There’s always two or three real shocks that turn everything around. I think kids like that. I think they like being teased.”


https://bit.ly/3BVuOtR

06/10/2022

06/10/2022

A group of library patrons in Llano, Texas, has filed a First Amendment lawsuit against county officials for removing or restricting a range of books. It's a rare example of readers pushing back.

06/10/2022

New Episode!

While it's no secret we think a perfect world would be one where everyone is a book lover, we know that just isn't the case for many people, including a fair number of kids in late elementary and middle school. Maybe they are into extracurricular activities or reading seems like a chore because they are forced to read for school. But whatever the reason, our guest Tyler Miller, aims to write and publish books for the reluctant reader.

Tyler is the founder of Reluctant Reader Books, a publishing company whose goal is to create books for kids who hate to read. He is a former teacher who saw that a considerable proportion of his students in 6th and 7th grade couldn't find a book that interested them and that many of the classics of this era like Harry Potter can be intimidating to a reluctant reader because of its size. A lot of books on the shelves seemed to have moved away from the fairly short books he had enjoyed at that age like those by R. L. Stine and Bruce Coville. So Tyler decided to try to fill that need. He has published 3 books in his Nevermore series that are creepy (like in a Twilight Zone sort of way) but not terribly scary for younger readers.

And their website www.reluctantreaderbooks.com is a great resource for parents, teachers, and librarians with author interviews, book reviews and recommendations for this age group, and nuts and bolts info about how to get kids reading more.

A link to the episode is in the comments.

04/10/2022

We sat down with the fabulously talented Mary Winn Heider and discussed books, Italian circuses, how the theater is a fine training ground for writers, and why kids are the coolest audience that exists.

Check it out.

Check out our exclusive interview with Mary Winn Heider, author of The Mortification of Fovea Munson.

04/10/2022

The spookiest month of the year has begun! Happy October everyone 🍁🎃☠️🌙🌾

04/10/2022

The prolific children's book author's advice? Remember who you were at 8. "Because you were right: The world is filled with wonder and magic and you have a big role to play in it,”

25/09/2022

Found two of my favorite authors side by side on a Books for Boys display! Buy both and you can laugh and shiver on your way out the door.

25/09/2022

Just finished this slender but powerful novel by Anthony McGowan. I’m always deeply impressed by writers brave enough to give us an unfiltered view of reality, who show us the pain and the violence that accompany life on this mortal coil.

McGowan writes with a simplicity and grace reminiscent of Hemingway, prose that is unadorned and yet moves the reader with its clarity and brevity. This is a novel to put next to your Beverly Clearys and your Judy Blumes: sharp, wise and told with great compassion.

It is also a great choice for reluctant readers, especially those readers who feel like books don’t portray life as it really is.

Don’t miss it.

21/09/2022

We reached out to dozens of middle grade authors and asked for their best writing advice for kids. This is what they told us.

29 award-winning middle grade authors share their best writing tips and tricks.

13/09/2022

https://reluctantreaderbooks.com/1029-best-writing-prompts-for-middle-school/

Here it is: the most comprehensive and engaging resource on the internet. Over 1000 prompts across 20 categories.

If you're tired of the same old ho-hum writing prompts that cause your students to roll their eyes and groan, then this is the resource you've been looking for. It runs the gamut from the humorous to the thought-provoking, with prompts that will inspire students to think critically about themselves, their school and their world.

We've compiled over 1,000 writing prompts across 20 categories for middle school students.

13/09/2022

Let's celebrate Banned Books Week! From September 18-24, there are tons of ways to get in on the education and fun.

13/09/2022

Bonners Ferry is a town deep in self-proclaimed "Trump Country." But here, Trump voters and Biden voters are joining together to stop ultra-conservative Christians attacking their library.

11/09/2022

The paperback version of the first book in the Cookie Chronicles has arrived at in Chelan. Any fans of Dog Man or Diary of a Wimpy Kid, this is right up your alley.

We wrote up a review of this fantastic series last year, and and have a new book out soon. Keep your eyes open for it, cause this is one special set of books.

Get your hands on this one while you can.

08/09/2022

This young man took a ride on the Death Cab. And lived to tell the tale!

29/08/2022

Digging into another Rebecca Stead novel. There is something beguiling about Stead’s prose, the way she often describes details that seem both random and profound, and then to find later they are keenly important details that serve a larger story.

All the great writers are excellent observers of the everyday, noting what others miss. And Stead does so with a kind of easygoing flair that looks simple but is very, very hard.

22/08/2022

Somehow I missed this one years ago. What wonderful writing, realistic characters and intriguing story. It’s easy to see why so many people love this one.

20/08/2022

Our Nevermore series on the shelves at Riverwalk Books.

These books are fast and fun. Perfect for fans of Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

18/08/2022

Look what came in the mail! I feel books and authors are like friends. Most of your favorites are ones you first met when you were young.

On occasion, though, you are lucky enough to stumble upon a writer later in life and find that they quickly become like your old friends, and you wonder how you went so long without their books.

With every book I read by Gantos, I am more impressed, and I have yet to be disappointed. I’m looking forward to the Joey Pigza series. If you haven’t read it, track it down.

📖

13/08/2022

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rare-move-school-librarian-fights-back-court-conservative-activists-rcna42800

Louisiana middle school librarian Amanda Jones said she’s “had enough” of extreme rhetoric deployed against educators over LGBTQ materials.

13/08/2022

Picked this up today. Had no idea lives like an hour away. Looking forward to reading this one here in sunny Lake Chelan.