Try this website for recommendations:

http://readkiddoread.com/home

There is a special list of "sure shot" books for boys. But all the lists would help you narrow down your search.

Roald Dahl is an author that has a lot of good read-alouds that appeal to boys--(but my girls both loved them, too!) James & the Giant Peach, Matilda, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The BFG are all memorable readalouds.

www.guysread.com is another great website that focuses solely on books that appeals to boys. I am going assume that your son is upper elementary... The Lightning Thief series and Wimpy Kid series are very good and also incredibly popular right now, but popular enough that y'all may have already blazed right through them, so here are some other ideas:

Adventure: White Fang/Jack London, Hatchet/Gary Paulsen
Fantasy: Eragon/Christopher Paolini, The Alchemyst/Michael Scott
Science Fiction: Ender's Game/Orson Scott Card
Mystery: 39 Clues series/various authors
Animals/Fantasy: Warriors series/Erin Hunter

I am a middle school librarian and I love to answer questions about kids' books, so feel free to ask away if anything else comes up!

David, This is how I found this site.....When I was in 3rd grade my teacher read to us every afternoon after lunch. She read a series of books called THE GREAT BRAIN etc.... Adventures of a boy and his brothers and friends. I enjoyed them, even though I am a female. I just recently bought every one of the 8 book series after finding out the book titles on this site. I read 4 so far and enjoyed them as much as I did 47 years ago. Yea Flashlight Worthy. I would suggest bedtime readings aloud.....Rebecca

Thanks for the wonderful responses, everyone!

I personally believe that pushing younger kids when reading with them, as in reading above their level, is the way to go - so long as they enjoy the books. All of your suggestions definitely fit the bill.

I have made out a little program with my 6 year old son that goes something like this:

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightening Thief
Artemis Fowl
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: Sea of Monsters
The Complete Bone Adventures (it you can by the $40 b&w single volume version you will thank yourself.)
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Titans Curse

That should keep us going for quite some time...

David-

So glad to hear you're working hard to get your son into reading. Age 6 is a bit below my level of expertise, but here are a number of older children's books I loved as a boy -- you can use them to build a reading list for years to come:

-- The Swiss Family Robinson (loved it at age 11)

-- The Great Brain Series (The 7 original and the new 8th book -- loved it around... 8 years old?)

-- The Little House on the Prairie series (Read all 7 or 8 of them in a single day when I was about 9)

-- The now out-of-print Danny Dunn series. These will likely seem dated in many ways, but all 15 were riveting for me. Find a few used (it starts with Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint) and see how they go.

-- The few Mad Scientist Club books -- fantastic for age 8 or so.

-- The White Mountains trilogy and the eventual prequel "When the Tripods Came" -- these are fantastic for age 8 or 9.

-- Almost EVERY Roald Dahl is great but Danny the Champion of the World is a *fantastic* father/son book for you to read aloud to him. Maybe not at age 6, but soon. Ah, who knows. Get a copy and see how it goes.

Of course Percy Jackson is good as are the earlier Harry Potters.

Best of luck and who knows, in a few months maybe you'll be able to send me a list of great books for 6 year old boys!

Peter
(The guy who runs Flashlight Worthy)

Thanks, Peter.

I take Roald Dahl as given. He is such an institution in my mother country, the UK. I still have my signed copy of Danny Champion of the World that was a birthday present when I was 10, I think. I still have to track down some of Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected for my own pleasure.

Thanks for the reminder about Tripods. I haven't read it but I thoroughly enjoyed the BBC adaptation when I was a kid.

My intention is to push my boy to read things with me that are assumed to be above his age level. The idea is that he'll be stretched by story and character and be inspired to read more when he is older.

One of the things that I'm specifically looking for are books that "alienate" my daughter in a nice way. i.e. This is Father and Son time and she is happy to leave us be alone because she isn't interested.

Other books I thoroughly enjoyed reading as a kid were:

Treasure Island: Robert Louis Stephenson
The Three Musketeers: Alexandre Dumas
Some Dickens: A Christmas Carol, A Tale Of Two Cities, the more action packed ones.
Mark Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.

I'm also interested in Chinese books, especially Kung Fu legends that have been translated to English and are suitable for kids.

Well, three more classics that are in the same vein as the ones you just mentioned that I thoroughly enjoyed that you could add to that list are The Count of Monte Cristo, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and Robinson Crusoe. I am a woman of course, but none of those books are feminine at all.