Suggested Reading

Suggested Reading

The list below was created from a survey run on Lovereading4schools.Teachers and parents were asked to recommend books that they have found helpful in encouraging reluctant readers. All books listed are available from amazon.co.uk, often for as little as £0.01 from marketplace sellers.

/ Silverfin
Charlie Higson
James Bond is back, aged 13 years. The original superspy. A global phenomenon . A hero every boy wants to be and every girl wants to know.
Silverfin introduces us to young James in the 1930's as he goes to Eton in London for the first time. He ends up in Scotland where the adventure really starts.
Great villains, great setting and the start of a great series.
Graphic novel version also available.
/ Skulduggery Pleasant
Derek Landy
Stephanie's uncle Gordon is a writer of horror fiction. But when he dies and leaves her his estate, Stephanie learns that while he may have written horror, it certainly wasn't fiction. Pursued by evil forces intent on recovering a mysterious key, Stephanie finds help from an unusual source -- the wisecracking skeleton of a dead wizard. When all hell breaks loose, it's lucky for Skulduggery that he's already dead. Though he's about to discover that being a skeleton doesn't stop you from being tortured, if the torturer is determined enough. And if there's anything Skulduggery hates, it's torture! Will evil win the day? Will Stephanie and Skulduggery stop bickering long enough to stop it? One thing's for sure: evil won't know what's hit it.
/ Stormbreaker
Anthony Horowitz
When his guardian dies in suspicious circumstances, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider finds his world turned upside down. Forcibly recruited into MI6, Alex has to take part in gruelling SAS training exercises. Then, armed with his own special set of secret gadgets, he's off on his first mission to Cornwall, where Middle-Eastern multi-billionaire Herod Sayle is producing his state-of-the-art Stormbreaker computers. Sayle has offered to give one free to every school in the country - but there's more to the gift than meets the eye.
/ Tomorrow, When The War Began
John Marsden
This is the first in an ongoing series of books about how a group of Australian teenagers cope when their country is unexpectedly invaded by an unknown country. They have to survive by their wits alone in a land suddenly alien to them; the book is about how they cope with the loss of friends, family and their entire world - and how they start to fight back.
/ Artemis Fowl
Eoin Colfer
Twelve-year-old villain, Artemis Fowl, is the most ingenious criminal mastermind in history. His bold and daring plan is to hold a leprechaun to ransom. But he's taking on more than he bargained for when he kidnaps Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon (Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance Unit). For a start, leprechaun technology is more advanced than our own. Add to that the fact that Holly is a true heroine and that her senior officer Commander Root will stop at nothing to get her back and you've got the mother of all sieges brewing!
Graphic novel version also available.
/ Across The Nightingale Floor
Lian Hearn
In his black-walled fortress at Inuyama, the murderous warlord, lida Sadamu, surveys his famous nightingale floor. Constructed with exquisite skill, it sings at the tread of each human foot. No assassin can cross it unheard.
Brought up in a remote mountain village among the Hidden, a reclusive and spiritual people, Takeo has learned only the ways of peace. Why, then, does he possess the deadly skills that make him so valuable to the sinister Tribe? These supernatural powers will lead him to his violent destiny within the walls of Inuyama - and to an impossible longing for a girl who can never be his. His journey is one of revenge and treachery, honour and loyalty, beauty and magic, and the passion of first love.
/ Boy Soldier
Andy Mcnab, Robert Rigby
Danny Watts' grandfather, Fergus, was a traitor - one of the worst sort and an SAS explosives expert who betrayed his country and his Regiment for money - drug money. He was arrested and left to rot and die in a Columbian jail. At least, that's what seventeen-year-old Danny is told when his hopes of becoming a soldier are destroyed for ever. But he knows something the army doesn't seem to know. Fergus Watts is alive and in the UK, living in secret under an assumed name - but where?
Packed with breathtaking action, SAS procedures and surveillance and survival techniques, this is a fast-moving, action-packed thriller for teenagers.
/ Bumface
Morris Gleitzman
Angus is forced to be much more grown up than he wants to be - he has to look after his sister and baby brother and he's only eleven. He dreams of being wild and free like the pirate in a story he tells Imogen and Leo but instead he spends lots of time changing nappies and cleaning up. His mum, a TV star, calls him Mr Dependable, but he can barely cope and knows that another baby in the family could mean disaster. He must find out about contraception, and convince his mother that he is still a child.
/ Cirque Du Freak,
Darren Shan
Darren Shan seems like your average boy--he likes playing football with his mates, passing notes in class and loves spiders. Then, one day, his best mate Steve gets tickets for a banned freak show and Darren starts experiencing things that no average boy would dream of. At the Freak show he sees a limb-chewing wolf man, a woman who can grow a beard in front of your very eyes, a snake boy and a goat-eating tarantula called Madame Octa. But what about the mysterious people in blue-hooded robes whose faces you never see? And is Mr Crepsley really a vampire?
Wrap yourself up in your duvets and get prepared to be scared.
/ Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Mark Haddon
Christopher is an intelligent youth who lives in the functional hinterland of autism--every day is an investigation for him because of all the aspects of human life that he does not quite get. When the dog next door is killed with a garden fork, Christopher becomes quietly persistent in his desire to find out what has happened and tugs away at the world around him until a lot of secrets unravel messily.
/ Holes
Louis Sachar
Camp Greenlake is a place for bad boys, where the belief is: "if you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy." When Stanley Yelnats, accused and found guilty of a crime he did not commit, is sent to Camp Greenlake he really doesn't think it can be so bad. It turns out he’s wrong.
If you are looking for a truly remarkable novel, something to get your teeth into, something to make you think, and something to make you feel that you have just touched real class, then look no further than Louis Sachar's extraordinary, award-winning novel Holes.

Small Steps

Louis Sachar

This book is a sequel to the brilliant 'Holes' and follows two of the Camp Green Lake in-mates, Armpit and X-Ray, as they try to make it in the outside world. Armpit is trying to earn an honest living but he is soon drawn into X-Ray's latest scam, touting tickets for teenage singing sensation Kaira DeLeon. This leads to plenty of adventures, an unlikely romance and some uncomfortable brushes with the law.

/ Noughts and Crosses
Malorie Blackman
Sephy and Callum have been best friends since childhood, and now they are older and they realise they want more from each other. But the harsh realities of lives lived in a segregated society are beginning to take their toll: Callum is a nought--a second-class citizen in a world dominated by the Crosses--and Sephy is a Cross, and the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the country. The barriers they would have to cross to be together at first seem little more than minor obstacles to the two idealistic teenagers, but soon those barriers threaten not only their friendship but their lives.
/ Private Peaceful
Michael Morpurgo
"Tommo" Peaceful is recalling his childhood from those terrible battlefields. He remembers his big brother Charlie taking him to his first day of school, the death of his father, his mum working hard to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table. Together Charlie and Tommo enlist and are sent to France, almost immediately, to what could only be described as pure hell on Earth. Bullets, bombs, death. Shells, noise, dirt. Disease, rats, stench. Charlie and Tommo fight for their lives and try to stay together--facing certain death in the face every time they try to advance the British lines.
/ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
JK Rowling
Say you've spent the first 10 years of your life sleeping under the stairs of a family who loathes you. Then, in an absurd, magical twist of fate you find yourself surrounded by wizards, a caged snowy owl, a phoenix-feather wand and jellybeans that come in every flavour, including strawberry, curry, grass and sardine. Not only that, but you discover that you are a wizard yourself! This is exactly what happens to young Harry Potter in J K Rowling's enchanting, funny debut novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
/ A Series of Unfortunate Events
Lemony Snicket
The Baudelaire siblings are enjoying a day at the beach when Mr. Poe comes walking through the fog to find them. He has very bad news. Their house has burned to the ground and their parents are dead. To honor their father's wishes, they are sent to live with Count Olaf across town. He treats them like slaves. But that's just the beginning. He also wants to take over their trust fund, and will stop at nothing to do so.
/ The Little Soldier
Bernard Ashley
Kaninda survives the brutal attack by government troops on his East African village that leaves his family dead. He joins the Kibu rebel army but is picked up by the Red Cross and 'rescued' from a refugee camp by a zealous religious group God's Force. Finding himself on a housing estate in south London, he witnesses a different tribal warfare, one gang against another. This is a tautly written book, complex and hard-hitting, but immensely rewarding, which examines questions of loyalty, revenge, guilt, war, rights and ultimately freedom.
/ Twilight
Stephenie Meyer
When 17 year old Isabella Swan moves to Forks, Washington to live with her father she expects that her new life will be as dull as the town. But in spite of her awkward manner and low expectations, she finds that her new classmates are drawn to this pale, dark-haired new girl in town. But not, it seems, the Cullen family. These five adopted brothers and sisters obviously prefer their own company and will make no exception for Bella. Bella is convinced that Edward Cullen in particular hates her, but she feels a strange attraction to him, although his hostility makes her feel almost physically ill. He seems determined to push her away ? until, that is, he saves her life from an out of control car. Bella will soon discover that there is a very good reason for Edward's coldness. He, and his family, are vampires ? and he knows how dangerous it is for others to get too close.

If you have found any other books that you have really enjoyed then please let us know and we can include them on the next reading list!