At the conclusion of our course with Tom Newkirk at the University of New Hampshire Literacy Institutes, our class collaboratively created a list of books that boys love.
Please add your own suggestions for your male students’ favorite books in the comments!
- Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, and Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer
- Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
- Unwind and others by Neal Shusterman
- Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
- Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra
- Hellhound on His Trail by Hampton Sides
- Maze Runner by James Dashner
- Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock and BOY21 by Matthew Quick
- Mexican Whiteboy and others by Matt de la Pena
- I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak
- Start Something That Matters, Little Princes, and other inspiring memoirs
- Winger and 100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith
- Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
- A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer
- American Sniper, The Things They Carried, Ghost Soldiers, The Good Soldiers, No Easy Day, and other war books in general
- City of Thieves by David Benioff
- Boot Camp and others by Todd Strasser
- Stiff, Spook, etc. by Mary Roach
- Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
- Anything by Gary Paulsen or Jack Gantos
- Iron Man, Deadline, and others by Chris Crutcher
- The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
- Warhammer novels by Ian Watson
- The First Stone, Running on Empty, and other books by Don Aker
- GRAPHIC NOVELS:
- Walking Dead
- Maus
- Watchmen
- A Dozen Demons
- V for Vendetta
- American Born Chinese
- Chew
- Naruto
- Pride
- Persepolis
- Burma Chronicles
- My Friend Dahmer
- Stitches
- The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan With Doctors Without Borders
- Ice Time by Jay Atkinson
- Everything by Walter Dean Myers
- An Invisible Thread by Laura Schroff
- Crank, Rumble, and more by Ellen Hopkins
- 4021A by Joe Hill (Stephen King’s son)
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Tagged: books, books and boys, boys, boys and literacy, Classroom Library
Three Teachers Talk 
[…] learning this summer at the UNH Literacy Institute. Check out the post of their takeaways and recommended titles for boys, then read Jackie’s explanation of why humor–even fart jokes–is so important in […]
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Thank you for this list!! I’m working on adding more boy friendly reads for my classroom library, and this is exactly what I need!
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This is a great list! The Terrible Two by Mac Barnett and Jory John is very popular with elementary school boys. Also- The Crossover by Kwame Alexander is a must-have in classroom libraries for our middle grade boys!
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A few, of many, to add:
The Rose that Grew from Concrete by Tupac Shakur
(The visual is stunning – one side is his notebook musings and the other is the formalized [typed] piece. This always lends itself to thought-provoking prose AND the importance of the Writer’s Notebook.)
Convicted in the Womb by Carl Upchurch
(Only available on Amazon, yet many come autographed!)
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by Dr. John Gray
(This tends to be read with deep concentration filtered with out loud ‘aha’s!)
Letters to a Young Brother & Letters to an Incarcerated Brother by Hill Harper
Inside: Life Behind Bars in America by Michael C. Santos
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Okay, throw back to an earlier time here are a couple of beloved books for boys:
My Side of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George
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Any book by Jim Kjielgaard (wrote about Dogs)
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Red-Other-Great-Stories/dp/0553186221/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1438986626&sr=1-1&keywords=jim+kjelgaard+collection
Big Red (1945)
Snow Dog (1948)
A Nose for Trouble (1949)
Irish Red, Son of Big Red (1951)
Outlaw Red, Son of Big Red (1953)
Haunt Fox (1954)
Lion Hound (1955)
Desert Dog (1956)
Wolf Brother (1957)
Swamp Cat (1957)
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Any book by Willard Price who wrote about high-adventures for boys:
South Sea Adventure (my favorite)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Price%27s_Adventure_series
http://www.amazon.com/Willard-Price/e/B001KDDAZS
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And who could forget Wilson Rawls:
Where The Red Fern Grows
Old Yeller
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=wilson+rawls&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Awilson+rawls
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And, whodathunk that Stephen King would write a fantasy book?
Eyes Of The Dragon
And then there’s… Pet Sematary
http://www.amazon.com/Eyes-Dragon-Stephen-King/dp/B001TMNE6U/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1438986825&sr=1-2&keywords=the+eyes+of+the+dragon+by+stephen+king
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Jack London
The Call of The Wild
Sea Wolf
White Fang
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Robert Louis Stevenson
Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde
Treasure Island
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Jules Vern
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
A Journey to the Center of the Earth.
H.G. Wells
The Time Machine
The Invisible Man
The War of the Worlds
All the above books are very readable, and most of them have been made into movies over and over so you could encourage them to read and then watch the movies.
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The boys at my high school love I Hunt Killers (it is a trilogy).
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