A Book List for Boys

Modern society often appears to not know what to do with boys. Much of it seems to be annoyed that they aren’t more like girls, with phrases such as ‘toxic masculinity’ abounding and complaints they don’t cry enough. Health and safetyism suppresses opportunities for natural exuberance and then - with no opportunity to work off energy - shows little sympathy shown for boisterousness. But at the same time, many of the counter-cultural influences are equally negative, with individuals such as Andrew Tate celebrating porn and misogyny.

The solution to this is clearly - as it is to everything - Books.¹ Books, Books and More Books. And to that end, here is a list of 20 Books for Boys that can help hold up better examples of boyhood, manhood and masculinity, promote virtues downplayed in today’s society and provide a better sense of grounding in history and understanding of the past.

But first, I’d like to say thank you to everyone who read, commented on, shared or otherwise engaged with my three-part series on Understanding the Rise of Reform. The trial of splitting the post into three was a clear success - just by the numbers, all three posts significantly over-performed my average views and I got over 70 more subscribers. But we’ve had a lot on politics recently, so time for a post on one of the other topics this blog is meant to be about.

As someone with a boy who is now eleven (‘Eldest’), this is something I’ve thought a fair bit about - and while most of the books I’ve read to him, or recommended, I’ve done purely because they are great books, I’ve also deliberately tried to introduce those that, in addition, will be helpful, or beneficial, or that may cultivate or introduce some valuable perspective that our modern society misses - or in some cases is actively against.

Of course, I love many modern books, and so does Eldest. And there are lots of great things about them, as well as some fantastic stories. But in aggregate, they often seem a little narrow. The virtues promoted focus heavily on inclusion and friendship (bravery does sometimes get a look in) - there is nothing wrong with this, but they are not the only virtues - nor their lack the only vices.²

The dominance of fantasy in children’s literature - and don’t get me wrong, I love fantasy - also means that there is less opportunity to encounter real facts about the world, and its history.³ This can be as simple as - as happened a few months ago, when reading a book set in the world - encountering a reference to the fact that the Philippines had once been ruled by Spain⁴. Perhaps more importantly, rather than every children’s fantasy world having 21st century norms, books set in the real world helps children to gain perspective on the mores, moral imperatives and hang-ups of our own time, and expose children to the idea that those in the past had different lives, values and customs than we did - and yet could still be kind or cruel, brave or cowardly, wise or foolish, or honourable or wicked, just the same. As C. S. Lewis wrote:

None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us... To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.

C. S. Lewis

Every book but one on this list⁵ is one I’ve either read to or recommended to Eldest, or that I intend to within the next couple of years. They are all good books, great books - for no amount of worthiness makes up for a book that is not good to read. But in putting together this list, I’ve particularly focused on three elements, of which each of these has at least one, and some all three:

a) Books which promote virtues and outlooks that are often neglected in this. One of the chief of these is that sometimes life is not fair - but that you continue and do your best anyway. This is a strong theme of many books in the past, but seems much less common today (in both books and society).⁶ Other virtues I look for include honour and keeping your word, and studiousness (our society seems to tell boys that bookishness is bad).

b) Books which promote outdoor play, adventurousness and independency by boys (and girls) of their own age, or slightly older. Children should understand what was once normal, and actively want to be out climbing trees and having their own independence. Let them understand what was once their birthright, and yearn to reclaim it.⁷

c) Books which transport the reader to other places and other times, rooting them in the history of the world - and (as I am British) particularly that of Britain. Today’s education is highly deracinated⁸, in school, too often they learn a pic’n’mix of snippets; Chinese inventions one week, the sixties the next. Modern children’s books, similarly, lean heavily towards fantasy, or to modern-day preoccupations. And so we need books: books that can tiptoe us towards that great well of history that stands behind us and peer us over the edge, glimpsing, just for a few hours, where we were and where we have come from.

As Neal Stephenson wrote⁹:

The lesson most people are taking home from the Twentieth Century is that, in order for a large number of different cultures to coexist peacefully on the globe (or even in a neighborhood) it is necessary for people to suspend judgment in this way. Hence (I would argue) our suspicion of, and hostility towards, all authority figures in modern culture. As David Foster Wallace has explained in his essay "E Unibus Pluram," this is the fundamental message of television; it is the message that people take home, anyway, after they have steeped in our media long enough. It's not expressed in these highfalutin terms, of course. It comes through as the presumption that all authority figures--teachers, generals, cops, ministers, politicians--are hypocritical buffoons, and that hip jaded coolness is the only way to be.

The problem is that once you have done away with the ability to make judgments as to right and wrong, true and false, etc., there's no real culture left. All that remains is clog dancing and macrame. The ability to make judgments, to believe things, is the entire it point of having a culture….

…The global anti-culture that has been conveyed into every cranny of the world by television is a culture unto itself, and by the standards of great and ancient cultures like Islam and France, it seems grossly inferior, at least at first. The only good thing you can say about it is that it makes world wars and Holocausts less likely--and that is actually a pretty good thing!

The only real problem is that anyone who has no culture, other than this global monoculture, is completely screwed. Anyone who grows up watching TV, never sees any religion or philosophy, is raised in an atmosphere of moral relativism, learns about civics from watching bimbo eruptions on network TV news, and attends a university where postmodernists vie to outdo each other in demolishing traditional notions of truth and quality, is going to come out into the world as one pretty feckless human being. And--again--perhaps the goal of all this is to make us feckless so we won't nuke each other.

On the other hand, if you are raised within some specific culture, you end up with a basic set of tools that you can use to think about and understand the world. You might use those tools to reject the culture you were raised in, but at least you've got some tools.

In the Beginning was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson

A little throat-clearing…

So I don’t get yelled at, a little throat-clearing before we get into the books themselves:

• Obviously, girls can also read and enjoy these books. While I have selected these thinking of boys, I will also be recommending most or all of them to Youngest (a girl) - it is a Book List for Boys, not a Book List only for Boys.

• This is not a list aimed at teaching boys to read or getting boys enthusiastic about reading. Those are also very important things to do - and would have a largely different list, which might include the brilliant Alien Adventures series. This is a list of books which may be helpful, useful, or encouraging for boys in today’s society.

• There are many more great books out there - including many of my favourite books. A book not being on this list does not signify anything - and I’d love to here your suggestions.

OK, get on with it, where are the books?

Here goes.

These are not ordered by preference, bur rather by approximate age order,¹⁰ with those at the top being for c. 5+, while those nearer the bottom being more like 12+.¹¹

1. The Chronicles of Narnia (C. S. Lewis): Narnia combines glorious imagination, great adventure and excellent (though notably, and deliberately, not perfect) role models. Pearls of wisdom are scattered throughout, yet they never interfere with the story.¹²

2. Danny Dunn series (Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams): Great science-fiction aimed at younger children; Danny Dunn and his friends Irene and Joe’s¹³ adventures with Professor Euclid range from the more realistic (Danny Dunn and the Swamp Monster, Danny Dunn on the Ocean Floor) to the less so (Danny Dunn, Time Traveller, Danny Dunn and the Smallifying Machine). Pro-science, pro-studiousness, pro-curiosity. Can be read in any order.¹⁴

3. Matilda (Roald Dahl)¹⁵: Dahl’s exuberance, subversion and wicked sense of humour captures something fundamental about childhood - and is no doubt why children love them. Matilda is the Best Dahl¹⁶, not to mention containing excellent pro-reading propaganda. Read the unbowdlerised edition, of course.

4. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (J. K. Rowling): We should probably accept now that there really is something magical about the inventiveness, wonder and humour of Rowling’s creation, one that has outlasted the initial hype to enthrall multiple generations. Her characters demonstrate bravery, self-sacrifice and friendship - including its ups and downs - while later books touch upon broader social issues.¹⁷

5. Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Rick Riordan)¹⁸: Not just amongst the best tales of teenage adventure and friendship, but an in-depth primer on the Greek Gods. I read them myself when Eldest started recounting an in-depth genealogy and greater detail than I could. They also, marvellously, capture the ‘feel’ of the Olympians, with Zeus turning someone into a pine tree because he felt pity for them¹⁹, or a complete Achilles/Patroclus/Agamemnon/Hector dispute replayed beat for beat as teen drama.

6. The Silver Sword (Ian Seraillier): A tremendous tale of courage under adversity and a good age-appropriate introduction to concepts such as the impact of totalitarianism, refugees and the impact Second World War on civilians in Europe. I particularly like the fact that it is one of the few books of its sort to show both Nazi and Soviet cruelty.²⁰

7. The Machine Gunners (Robert Weston): The tale of how Chas McGill and his friends find a working German machine gun, build a base - and ultimately end up capturing a real prisoner of war - is my favourite of the Home Front, and the teenage boys involved ultimately rise well to the various challenges they face.

8. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett): Straightforward propaganda for the virtues of being outdoors, childhood independence and unselfishness - all wrapped in a beautiful and enchanting story.

9. Space Cadet (Robert Heinlein): A paean to hard work, honesty, the virtues of study, loyalty and bravery - In Space! As many of Heinlein’s juveniles²¹ do, it strongly features the ‘life’s not fair - but you carry on anyway’ motif - as well as many other coming-of-age themes. Heinlein’s young heroes succeed through brains, technical nous and grit more than anything else, all of which are great qualities.²²

10. Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery): From her love of imagination and books, her scrapes, and her diligent studies, Anne - as does the books - manages to be both a fully wholesome role-model without being overly preachy.²³ The academic rivalry between Gilbert and Anne shows nicely that studiousness is for both boys and girls - and their self-sacrifical actions show that ultimately other things are more important.

11. The Eagle of the Ninth (Rosemary Sutcliffe): Sutcliffe takes us back in time to part of Britain’s ancient heritage²⁴, of Britons and Romans, and of a tale in which a person’s dreams are dashed away - and yet they find a new purpose all the same.

12. Kim (Rudyard Kipling): Kim’s glorious adventures upon the Grand Trunk Road transport us into another world, filled with all the richness and wonder of British India - with Kim himself, the ‘little friend of all the world’, crossing across castes, classes and creeds, observing it all.

13. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain): A peek into the freedom children were once allowed - freely playing in the woods, in caves and on islands. Tom is good-hearted and exemplifies the freedom and exuberance that boyhood should be about. Twain’s insights into human nature are also as perceptive as ever.²⁵

14. The Hobbit (J. R. R. Tolkien): Not only a wonderful adventure, but one in which Bilbo’s growth in courage, daring and steadfastness provides a great example. As Dumbledore famously said, “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends."

15. The 39 Steps (John Buchan): One of the great thrillers of all time, packed full of adventure and subterfuge - and a great window into Britain on the eve of the First World War.

16. Swallows and Amazons (Arthur Ransome)²⁶: Straightforward propaganda for the benefits of outdoor play, independence and adventurous activities. “Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers won’t drown” sums it up perfectly. Also a nice example of how older children can still take part in and get enjoyment from imaginative play.

17. The Innocence of Father Brown (G. K. Chesterton): You don’t have to share Chesterton’s Catholic faith to appreciate Father Brown’s perceptive and sometimes acerbic insights into both character, society and morality. Also, while Conan Doyle deserves kudos for popularising the detective short story genre, we should all admit that Father Brown is just that little bit better.

18. October Sky (Homer Hickham Jr): Inspired by Sputnik, a group of boys from a West Virginian mining town decide to build their own rockets, ultimately getting them to go five miles high. An autobiographical novel, it is packed full of coming-of-age wisdom, determination in the face of challenges and setbacks - and even better that it is all true. Also contains a lot of social commentary, such as the role of trade unions and deindustrialisation, as the backdrop against which the story plays out.

19. The Daybreakers (Louis L’Amour): L’Amour’s Westerns typically have as a protagonist someone who acts with honour and decency, who keeps their word, perseveres, doesn’t give up, stands by the weak and always gives their best. Perhaps it’s an ideal that wasn’t often realised - but it’s still an ideal to live up to. The Daybreakers is one of his best.

20. Dune (Frank Herbert): From ‘Never sit with your back to an open door’ to ‘Don’t start a jihad that will kill billions’, Dune has many practical lessons for the teenage boy. More seriously, Paul and many of the other characters have tremendous depth and strength in adversity, even if the world they operate in is somewhat dystopian. Not to mention one of the - if not the - greatest science fiction novels of all time.²⁷

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1. Lest anyone take this too seriously, it is clearly not only books. But books can help.

2. Putin and Trump should show us that much ill is still done simply in the cause of power, land and money - it is not always about discrimination, or hatred of an out-group (though that may end up being a by-product).

3. I suspect the two reasons for this is that (a) fantasy is fun and children like it; and (b) the increased ‘cancellation’ risk of writing books in the real world - particularly those periods most suited to adventure - makes many authors, quite reasonably, avoid it.

4. Eldest was born in the Philippines and so found this interesting, hence informing me of it, which is why I know.

5. The one exception is Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which he discovered and recommended to me!

6. We still recognise that things can be unfair - but the response is more righteous anger, with in books the protagonist then ‘righting the wrong’. That has its value, but is quite different from the idea that something can happen which is recognised as being deeply, painfully unfair - but that the best thing you can do is knuckle down and carry on despite it. The latter is probably a more useful approach, for most people, to use in their own lives.

7. Clearly one should also let them play outside, not baulk at them climbing trees and give them slightly more independence than you dare to!

8. For the avoidance of doubt, the word means ‘uprooted from one's natural geographical, social, or cultural environment’ - it has nothing to do with race.

9. In 1999!

10. Though I recognise this depends a lot on both individual reading ability and inclination - as well as whether you are reading them to the child or they are reading it themselves.

11. Don’t get hung up on the exact order though - I’ve not thought too much about the exact ordering.

12. I always remember feeling deeply agrieved on Shasta’s behalf at the line, “He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.” And yet it is both true and good that this is so.

13. Think Harry, Hermione and Ron, in that order.

14. This is a Book List for Boys, but some readers may also be interested to know that Irene wishes to be a physicist, which is treated entirely legitimately - not bad for a book written in 1956.

15. I don’t believe people can only learn stuff from books where the main character is the same sex as them.

16. I went back and forth for a while between this and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which also contains excellent anti-TV and anti-chewing gum propaganda, but ultimately Matilda takes the crown.

17. Though I am not convinced we needed an entire book on the message that Ofsted is Evil.

18. In principle one would think this should be positioned for an older age-range, but Youngest has just devoured the first five aged seven, hence its adjustment upwards.

19. As opposed to, you know, teleporting them to safety or defeating the monsters that were chasing them.

20. The Russian army deliberately halting until the Nazis had put down the Warsaw Uprising is something I learned first here and has always stuck with me.

21. What would now be called Young Adult.

22. I strongly considered Have Spacesuit, Will Travel - which also features many of these qualities, as well as an in-depth and effective take-down of progressive education, but ultimately Space Cadet just has the edge.

23. Though I like them, in books such as Little Women and What Katy Did the overt moralising is to my mind a little detracting from the overall enjoyment - whereas in the Anne series, though just as wholesome, it never is.

24. Essentially part of that great ‘story of England’ told in Puck of Pook’s Hill and elsewhere, of Celts and Romans, Saxons and Vikings, Normans and Tudors, of the ancient history of England before the Industrial Revolution, Empire, and the Enlightenment.

25. The fence white-washing episode being of course the classic.

26. Some may wonder why this is so far down the age-list, but I bounced off this when I read it in Year 6 (despite having read multiple other books, such as Kim, which are ostensibly harder, and Eldest has too. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

27. Dune is complex and I got a lot more from it when I read it as an adult than as a boy. But the same could be said of the very first book on this list - and I still got a lot from both from reading them as a child.