High-interest Easy-to-read Books for Boys Year 9 / Year 10

So you do not like to read yet? Surely there are good books you will enjoy in the library.

How to find a book for you with the library catalogue:

What are YOU interested in? Hunting? Skateboarding? Dating? Humorous or Scary? Extreme? Type one word in the library catalogue. Or try to type the words “reluctant” or “easy”.

Scroll the list of results to find a book that you may like, open the record details and read the Subjects, Notes and keywords to decide if you will like it. 

How to find a book for you in the shelves:

Find narrow books, or book published by Barrington Stoke.

Look for large fonts and short chapters.

Read the blurb on the back of the book. Open the book. Read one paragraph. If there are more than two words you do not read or know, then find an easier book.

Browse the Graphic Novels and Breezy reads (picture books area).

Or pick a book from the lists below or ask your librarian

When you have chosen, always record your book at the issue desk.

Good Books

Title	Author	Description	Location
A.N.T.I.D.O.T.E.	Malorie Blackman	Elliot’s Mum is arrested for breaking into a giant pharmaceutical company…	BLA
The Last Boy	June Colbert	When Ben emerges from his hiding place, he is the last person on Earth…	COL
The wish list	Eoin Colfer	Meg dies perfectly balanced between good and evil… Can she save her soul?	COL
Fifteen Love	Robert Corbet	Told from two perspectives, about daily life and a burgeoning relationship	COR
Shelf Life	Robert Corbet	Short stories of people in charge of different supermarket aisles	COR
A Good Keen Man	Barry Crump	NZ yarn	CRU
Bruises: Boys don’t cry	Archie Fusillo	Hard hitting novel dealing with teen culture in schools	FUS
Touch Me	James Moloney	Boy/girl relationship	MOL
Trash	Andy Mulligan	Kids survive on a dump, until they find a purse…	MUL
Holes	Louis Sachar	Stanley Yelnats is sent to a detention centre for a crime he did not commit…	SAC
Milkweek	Jerry Spinelli	Street children innocently surviving the Holocaust. Poignant!	SPI
To Die For	Mark Svendsen	A thrilling fishing story	SVE
The Underdog	Marcus Zusak	‘Boys are like dogs – ready to bite, bark, and beg to be given a chance to show their value.’ (Back cover)	ZUC

Good Authors

Title	Author	Description	Location
2Much4u, Boyznbikes	Vince Ford	Funny, real life stories	FOR
Boy Overboard, Once…	Morris Gleitzman	Great easy to read war stories	GLE
Burnt, Groosham Grange…	Horowitz	Quick reads – Horror, creepy stories	HOR
Uncanny (and others)	Paul Jennings	Humour	JEN
Hatchet, and sequels: the Return, the River…	Gary Paulsen	Brian, stranded alone in a crash in the wilderness, survives with just a hatchet…	PAU
Rani & Sukh, Dream on	Bali Rai	Real life stories, of street kids, family, soccer…	RAI

Good Series

Series	Author	Description	Location
Cherub	Robert Muchamore	Kids are trained to spy and survive in dangerous missions	MUC
Hunger Games	Suzanne Collins	TV reality game, to death…	COL
HIVE Higher Institute of Villainous Education	Mark Walden	Full of baddies, action and lashing of humour	WAL
Animorphs	K. A. Applegate	Friends are given the power to morph…	APP
My Story             Examples: Blitz (CRO) The Mine’s Afire (BAT) Sitting on the Fence (NAG)	Various authors	Based on true stories, a young person writes a diary of the time or event…
Saga of Darren Shan	Darren Shan	Plenty of horror and macabre…	SHA
World of Adventure	Gary Paulsen	Action-packed, danger, excitement in those Breezy reads	PAU/B
Alex Rider	Anthony Horowitz	Perfect spy and action hero chasing all criminals and surviving the worst situations	HOR
Tomorrow series	John Marsden	When Australian teenagers see the war coming…	MAR

Good Knowledge books

Theme	Examples	Location
Personal Life issues	Chicken soup for the teenage soul A child called It	158.1
Relationship issues	The courage to be strong	302.5
War stories	The secret agent and other spy kids War torn	355.1
Sport stories	Legs on Everest	796.52
Hunting stories	Deer were their lives	799.2
Biographies : real person’s lives	Willie Apiata, the reluctant hero	92 API
History stories	True stories of D-Day	940.54

2011 Library house competition

Issues per Whanau

Library House Competition detailed results

 So the results of the Library House competition are:

1^st Barker

2^ndPisa

3^rdRoy

4^th Iron

 Congratulation Barker!

And congratulations to RWT for being the greatest readers whanau!

E-reading poll

The library is encouraging reading in all formats, paper books, newspapers and magazines, audio books, graphic novels… We are now considering e-books. Please answer the poll to help us design a service that suits your needs.

  

Please leave a comment below to complement your answers. Thank you.

Boys reads

Here at Mount Aspiring College, there are 28 boys among the 100 best borrowers (according to the library database). But 57% of knowledge books are borrowed by boys and they also read more magazines.

There are two main ways to encourage boys to read more fiction:

1- Male role models who read for pleasure, not just for the “usefulness”. Well done, Dads who read novels at home! We are looking for male book lovers in the community who would like to come and share their passion with our students. Leave a comment if you want to volunteer.
2- Offering a choice of good books for boys. And that’s my role.

So here is a selection of great new novels for boys – girls will like them too:

- Funny business (spine SCI) is a collection of 10 Short stories guaranteed to delight and amuse, by award winning and favourite authors.

- Hell Island, by Matthew Reilly (REI) is a novella where the famous hero Scarecrow faces his worst mission yet, dealing with classified experiments that have gone terribly wrong… A hundred page book that you might well read in one go.

- Crash, by Jerry Spinelli (SPI) is best football player of the school, and he wears the most expensive clothes of the mall. Easy for him to laugh at nerd Penn Webb. Until a prank just goes too far… This award winning novel is an humorous glimpse of what jokes are made of…

- Code Lightfall and the robot King, by Daniel Wilson (WIL) is the first book of a new series where Code must survive in a land of robots… An easy to read adventure novel, bursting with robotic twists and turns.

- D-Day, by Bryan Perrett (PER) tells the story of Lieutenant Andy Pope who took part in the one of the deadliest battle of the Second World War. Experience history first-hand with “My story”, a series of vividly imagined accounts of life in the past.

- Just a Dog, by Michael Gerard Bauer (BAU) is a daily life story told by a normal boy in a normal family, with a normal dog… But written by a multi award-winning author, in an easy-to-read engaging style. A great quick read.

- The Devil’s Triangle, by Mark Robson (ROB) is an adventure where the Bermuda Triangle legend comes to life. Holidays, missing persons, fishing trips and solving a haunting puzzle, you’ll be hooked by the easy-to-read style and will be surprised!

- Out of Shadows, by Jason Wallace (WAL) is a multi-award winning book. Set in Zimbabwe after the independence war, it tells the story of white boys and black boys… It is brave and devastating. The chapters are short to make it easier to take in.

Last but not least, two additions to our well stocked sports section (796), BMX tricks (796.6) and Skateboarding tricks (796.22) in the Freestyle series, featuring lots of photos and step-by-step guides.

It IS cool for boys to read!

Library House competition results for term 1

The overall number of books issued has dramatically increased this year again and most students have borrowed more than one book, with 40 students having read 10 and more books. Good reading culture in the college. Well done!

And the number of overdue books has decreased!  Which means good books can be read by more people. Awesome!

Here are the results per house at the end of term one:

House	Books issued	Overdue Penalties*
Barker	757	84
Iron	578	57
Pisa	741	60
Roy	621	42

This is a temporary result.

• Pisa is ahead because they issued many books and got proportionally few penalties .
• Barker is second because they issued the most books but got far too many overdue books.

• Roy need to issue more books and
• Iron need to improve both …

Read more books and return them on time to help your house !

Click here for more on the Library House competition

* Overdue penalties based on the number of overdue books invoiced

How much should we read?

A student willing to get into higher education knows an average of 80,000 words. Assume that the period of vocabulary acquisition of our high school senior is the 15 years between age 2 and 17, our student needs to learn an average of fifteen words a day, more than 5,000 words per year.

So how much? Research shows that if children read 1 million words, at least 1,000 words will be added to their vocabulary. 1 millions words represents approximately:

• 20 books of 200 pages
• 40 books of 100 pages 
• 500 comics or newspaper feature
• 300 magazine articles
• 1000 encyclopedia definitions
• And any combination of these…

This is not going to happen in school alone. “Most vocabulary words,” Mr Hirsch argues, result “incidentally, from massive immersion in the world of language and knowledge.”

“The Power of reading” (Heinemann, 2004), Stephen Krashen

From a NZ National Library workshop, Dunedin, 2008

Why should you read at all?

In his book “The Power of reading” (Heinemann, 2004), Stephen Krashen tells us that free voluntary reading (=reading anything for your pleasure) is one of the best ways to learn language. You’ll gain better comprehension, writing style, vocabulary, spelling and grammar.

These are useful not only in English classes but also for any study and all your life, even on the Internet, you need to read instruction manuals, contracts, newspapers, books…

 So, just READ:

• For your pleasure
• To enrich your vocabulary
• To better succeed in studies
• TV vocabulary is too poor
• Necessary all life long
• Greater pleasure when you are read aloud, so enjoy story reading times
• Role model, so parents read/model/talk about

“Dad, can you read me a story?”

Do you remember reading with your Dad? Just write it (50 words or less) and be in to win a Book Tokens for Father’s Day! Time to say “Thank You”!

Email your “dad-book memory“  to dad@booksellers.co.nz by Wednesday 26 August. Please include your name, age and postal address in the email.

Details on http://www.booksellers.co.nz/fathers_day_09.htm

“Miss, can you recommend a good book?”

This is your most FAQ. And you may have heard me answering: “Well, most of them ARE good books. What do YOU want to read?” So how to choose a good book for you?  

Define your interests: animal or war story? Hilarious or scary? Spies, detectives, monsters? Time travel? Diary? True story? Whatever you like, you can type the keyword/s on the OPAC computer and scroll the list of results to find one that please you.  

Check out book lists: from teachers, from book guides (find them in 011/R or on the top of the reference shelf), from http://maclic.wordpress.com/book-lists/, from libraries and bookseller shops, from various literacy organizations (on the Book List page), from magazines…

If you liked a book… check out Book Find links (on the right), or you could read a book by the same author, or with the same key-words, or you can read the book again.

Book recommendation: Ask friends, family, and teachers what books they’d recommend you, or what books they liked. 

From the shelves: look at the spines or the covers, does the title talks to you? Take the book, read the back cover, or the first words. 

Try out different kind of books, to see what appeals to you. Have fun! Reading is enjoyable and can open up a brand new world!

If you choose your book/s in another way, please share it with us!