11 Books Every Boy Should Read

It’s tough to get boys to read.

I’m an exception to that rule – I’ve read incessantly since childhood. But I see that my son, now five, won’t sit still long enough to read: he’d prefer to build things or run around or bother his sisters. Which means that if you want boys to read, you have to give them material that excites them, that fascinates them, that rivets them.

With that in mind, here are 11 books all boys should read.

The Three Musketeers, by Alexander Dumas

The book’s simply a swashbuckling classic – juicy and fun and exciting. The story of D’Artagnan and his companions Athos, Porthos, and Aramis gallivanting around pre-revolutionary France, attempting to navigate the dangerous worlds of international and domestic politics, is simply un-put-downable – and unlike a lot of older literature, it’s eminently readable. A great film version of the book was split into two movies, The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), with Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, Richard Chamberlain, Raquelle Welch, Faye Dunaway, and Charlton Heston, among others. Appropriate for ages 12 and up, depending on the translation.

Shane, by Jack Schaeffer

The Western is an all-American art form, and Shane is the highest literary version of that form. The novel is nearly forgotten because the movie is a classic, but that shouldn’t be: it is beautifully written, spare, and a throwback to a time when heroes were expected to be heroic. 

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne

If you want to cultivate a taste for learning in your boy, give him some Jules Verne. Verne lives somewhere between Robert Louis Stevenson and Isaac Asimov, bridging the gap between pure adventure yarn and early science fiction. Filled with imagination, purely readable, and grounded in the kinds of questions your kids love asking about the natural world, Verne’s work is great both in itself and as a stepping stone to further reading.

The Man Who Would Be King, by Rudyard Kipling

Kipling is for your teenage boy, if your teenage boy is looking for rip-roaring adventure and a solid dose of British stiff-upper-lip civilizational pride. Kipling can’t be bested for either. This book, simultaneously hilarious and stirring, follows two British soldiers, part-time mountebanks, who decide to become kings of Kafiristan. So they simply pack up some rifles, and head across the mountains to fulfill their destinies. Another book that became a great movie, with Sean Connery, Michael Caine,