With five boys in the house, I’ve spent hours culling book lists and shelves for the best books for boys. They want books with action, adventure or humor and I want books that inspire character, through a fictional narrative or through an historic event or person.
Some of the books on this list have become old friends as they are handed from one brother to the next. Some are dog-eared and worn, reflecting the places they’ve traveled on trips, in the car and in backpacks. My boys still perk up about favorite books and each son has begun his own collection that will move with him one day. Their boyhood was formed as much from inventive play and backyard football games as afternoons sprawled in front of a G.A. Henty novel or Landmark history.
After polling my sons, gleaning from years of books lists and pulling from our own shelves, I want to share some of the best books for boys of all ages:
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Best books for young, emerging readers
A Pocketful of Goobers: a Story about George Washington Carver
Billy and Blaze series,
Dan Frontier series, William Hurley (OOP, so a library or Amazon find, but worth recommending!)
Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Riding the Pony Express and other books by Clyde Bulla
The Apple and the Arrow, Mary and Conrad Buff
The Matchlock Gun, Walter Edmonds
Veritas Press primers for 1st grade (the best books for emerging readers we could find; set includes 30 primers)
Best books for 3rd – 5th grade boys
Along Came Galileo, Jeanne Bendick
Boys of Grit who Became Men of Honor, Archer Wallace
Boys of Grit who Changed the World, Archer Wallace
Boys of Grit who Never Gave Up, Elsie Egermeier
Call It Courage, Armstrong Sperry
Captain Courageous, Rudyard Kipling
Daniel Boone, James Daugherty
David Livingstone, Janet and Geoff Benge (and all of the Christian Heroes Then and Now series)
Galen and the Gateway to Medicine, Jeanne Bendick
Gettysburg, MacKinlay Kantor
Henry Reed, Inc., Keith Robertson
Homer Price and Centerburg Tales, Robert McCloskey
Isaac Newton, John Hudson Tiner
Johannes Kepler, John Hudson Tiner
Landmark history series, many of these classics are OOP but many can still be found at Amazon.
Louis Pasteur, John Hudson Tiner
Minn of the Missississippi, Holling Clancy Holling
Moccasin Trail, Eloise Jarvis McGraw
My Side of the Mountain triology, Jean Craighead George
Paddle to the Sea, Holling Clancy Holling
Robert Boyle, John Hudson Tiner
Reb and the Redcoats, Constance Savery
Samuel Morse, John Hudson Tiner
Seventeenth Swap, Eloise McGraw
Streams to the River, River to the Sea, a Novel of Sacagawea, by Scott O’Dell
The American Boy’s Handy Book, Daniel Carter Beard (our copy was dog-earred well into early teen years)
The American Revolution, Bruce Blevin
The Cabin Faced West, Jean Fritz
The Whipping Boy, Sid Fleischman
Best books for Middle School Boys
Across Five Aprils, Irene Hunt
Adam of the Road, Elizabeth Janet Gray
Amos Fortune, Free Man, Elizabeth Yates
Beorn the Proud, Madeleine Pollard
Between the Forest and the Hills, Ann Lawrence
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, Jean Lee Latham
Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun, Rhoda Blumberg
Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, Dr. Ben Carson
God King: a Story of King Hezekiah, Joanne Williamson
Freckles, Gene Stratton Porter
Hittite Warrior, Joanne Williamson
If All the Swords in England, Barbara Willard
Johnny Tremain, Esther Forbes
Otto of the Silver Hand, Howard Pyle
Penrod, Booth Tarkington
Rifles for Watie, Harod V. Keith
Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, Mildred D. Taylor
Sounder, William Armstrong
The Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle
The Bronze Bow, Elizabeth George Speare
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Yearling, Mark Twain
Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
Up a Road Slowly, Irene Hunt
Vinegar Boy, Alberta Hawse
Victory on the Walls: a Story of Nehemiah, Frieda Clark Hyman
Best Books for Late Middle/High School Boys
Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, Eric Metaxes
John Adams, David McCullough
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, Alfred Lansing
Horatio Hornblower series, C.S. Forestor
Quiet Strength, Tony Dungy
Rolf and the Viking Bow, Allen French
Sergeant York and the Great War, ed. Richard Wheeler
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Doyle
The Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Red Keep, Allen French
The Scarlett Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy
The Thief Lord, Cornelia Funke
Through My Eyes, Tim Tebow
Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington
Poetry
Yes, poetry for boys! My sons have thoroughly enjoyed these fun poetry books.
A Bad Child’s Book of Beasts, Hillaire Belloc (with priceless illustrations)
A Child’s Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson
Falling Up (and other books), Shel Silverstein
Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices, Paul Fleischman
Modern Rhymes about Ancient Times: Ancient Rome, Susan Altman (and others about Greece, Egypt & Africa)
