Brilliant books for boys not hooked on reading.

If your son has a good sense of humour and prefers to read books that make him laugh out loud then he should look out for Liz Pichon, who this year won the Roald Dahl Funny Prize with ‘The Brilliant World of Tom Gates.‘ The book is about a doodler,Tom, who lists his hobbies as annoying his sister Delia, being in a band and eating caramel wafers. Liz has written two other books in this series; ‘Everything’s Amazing( sort of)‘ and ‘Excellent Excuses and Other Good Stuff.’

I encouraged my eleven year old son to read the first one and he was hooked before he got to the end of the first chapter. In fact, he enjoyed the book so much that within 6 days he had read all three. Of course, this level of passion for reading can create problems of a different sort – trying to get your son to sleep at a decent hour! – but that’s a topic for another blog. His only disappointment was that he’d read them too quickly.

I took the books up to my tuition centre in Walkden and asked a couple of boys that are reluctant readers to give them a try. Guess what? They both brought them back the following week and were desparate to borrow another. One boy pleaded with his mum to take him straight to the Trafford Centre (fortunately, there’s always late shopping at the TC ) to get his own copies so he didn’t have to wait.

Switching some boys on to reading can be a real challenge but finding books that appeal to them is more than half the battle! It would be great to know what your son or your students think of  Tom Gates?