[Repost] 10 books that boys should not miss

Great! The theme of this study ses­sion is “Chil­dren’s books relat­ed to boys’ growth.” It seems moth­ers of boys have a nat­ur­al advan­tage O(∩_∩)O haha~Orig­i­nal address:10 books boys should­n’t missauthor:Red Mud Study Group
My son is 9 years old, and he likes so many books. Due to space lim­i­ta­tions, I can only list a por­tion of them here, which is titled: 10 books that boys under 9 years old should not miss.

First place: Jour­ney to the West

Of course, it’s *Jour­ney to the West*. Among the many books my son loves, it’s one of the few orig­i­nal Chi­nese works, so nat­u­ral­ly, as a Chi­nese moth­er, I have to put it first. My son start­ed read­ing *Jour­ney to the West* when he was four years old and loved it for three years straight. He was fas­ci­nat­ed by every­thing relat­ed to *Jour­ney to the West*—the sto­ries told by Grand­pa Sun Jingx­iu, the com­ic books, the pic­ture books, the car­toons. We have count­less gold­en cud­gels at home, but the most pre­cious is the set of three dif­fer­ent-sized cud­gels that his father made for him by hand, which can be nest­ed togeth­er. It’s still one of his favorite toys to this day.

2. Com­ic Books

There’s prob­a­bly no boy in the world who does­n’t love com­ic books. Speak­ing of comics, you can’t leave out *The Adven­tures of Tintin*. My son start­ed read­ing Tintin when he was five, and even now at nine, he still reg­u­lar­ly takes out the books to review them; some are prac­ti­cal­ly worn out. Besides Tintin, his favorites include *Lucky Luke*, fol­lowed by *The Smurfs*, *Aster­ix and the Gal­lic Ances­tor*, and so on.

Third Place: Dahl’s Com­plete Works

My son’s favorite book is *George’s Mag­i­cal Potions*. He first encoun­tered it at Run­sheng Gar­den, where the detec­tive read it to the chil­dren. His incred­i­bly life­like, nasal cry of “George!” from his grand­moth­er sparked a two-year-long “potion-mak­ing oper­a­tion” among us par­ents. First to suf­fer were my expen­sive cos­met­ics, bought from abroad by friends. Then came all the clean­ing sup­plies, var­i­ous foods, med­i­cines, and pow­ders he could find, all stuffed into all sorts of bot­tles and jars and crammed under his bed. His nan­ny would often fran­ti­cal­ly pull out a bottle—either cov­ered in green mold or a black, sticky mess—while clean­ing his room. Lat­er, when he start­ed school, his home­room teacher was from Eng­land. He and his teacher would often talk about *George*, and the usu­al­ly seri­ous and gen­tle­man­ly teacher would imme­di­ate­ly become ani­mat­ed, ges­tur­ing wild­ly as he recount­ed how his moth­er had read the book to him when he was five. It seems Dahl has deeply tak­en root in the hearts of chil­dren both grown up and still grow­ing up around the world.

Fourth place: Char­lot­te’s Web

This book helped my son through a dif­fi­cult time. When he start­ed first grade, he was still learn­ing how to inter­act with oth­ers. Being nat­u­ral­ly gen­tle, he strug­gled to cope with dom­i­nant boys. He did­n’t want to lose his friends and become lone­ly, but at the same time, he did­n’t want to be con­trolled by them. It was like the lone­li­ness Wilbur felt before Char­lotte showed up. I remem­ber when I read him the sto­ry of the night Wilbur came to the barn, he tear­ful­ly said to me, “Mom, I’m lone­ly too, just like Wilbur.” Lat­er, when Char­lotte showed up, he asked me, “Does every­one meet a friend like Char­lotte?” I told him, “Yes, every­one meets their own Char­lotte.” He then got a stuffed black spi­der and put it next to his pil­low every night, imi­tat­ing Char­lotte. Now that he has many good friends, I won­der if he still remem­bers this expe­ri­ence.

Fifth place: “The Hap­py Life of Lit­tle Bear Mao­mao”

This was arguably the first set of books my son ever loved. He was just over three years old then, and every day after din­ner he would ask me to read the books to him. He still was­n’t sat­is­fied, so he would act as the direc­tor and have me act out the two lit­tle bears in the book with him. He enjoyed it immense­ly.

6. Emil the Young Boy

The first time I heard it was also at Run­shengyuan, read by A‑Jia. After we got back, I con­tin­ued to read the whole book to him. It was such a thick book, and he made me read it twice. This was the first big book he ever heard. He was 5 years old at the time.

Sev­enth place: Dav
All works by Pilkey

Includ­ing the Under­pants Man series, The Dumb
Bun­ny series, Mighty
The Robot and Drag­on series are both guar­an­teed to make you laugh until your stom­ach hurts.

8. Hal Roger and the Axe Boy

Both sets of books are books that boys can’t put down their food or sleep. The “Hal Roger” series has 14 books, and my son fin­ished read­ing it at a rate of almost one book every two days dur­ing the sum­mer vaca­tion of sec­ond grade.

Ninth place: “Fred­er­ick” and “A Col­or of His”
Own

My son also likes oth­er works of Lion­ni, but he seems to have a spe­cial pref­er­ence for these two and often turns him­self into Alfred to write poems.

10th place: The Light in the Attic

Xie Er’s poems have always been loved by his son. Take a look at this poem he wrote him­self. Does­n’t it have a bit of Uncle Xie’s shad­ow?

What do I see?

I see a bald man drink­ing hot
tea.
What do I see?

I see a nice lady cook­ing green
pea.

What do I see?

I see a naughty boy climb­ing on
a tree.

What do I see?

I see a pret­ty girl play­ing
with a bee.
What do I see?

I see a lit­tle dog catch­ing
jumped flea.

All ten spots were used up, but he still has many oth­er books he loves, such as *The Frog and the Toad*, *Lit­tle Nicholas*, *Super Adven­ture*, and *George and…*
Martha, Ancient Greek and Roman Mythol­o­gy, Frog, and so on.

Huang Jian­ping