History Boy's Reading List Part 1

If you've lived with or known HistoryBoy long enough, you know what his taste in books runs to. LARGE non-fiction books. Because seriously, what library could be complete without the classics you see here. If there is a train, plain, submarines, tank, animal, type of book or encyclopedia. It is probably well read on a shelf at our house. You CAN borrow it. Just ask ME. I won't mind one bit.

Now to let you know. It takes work, ALOT of work, to get our Aspies interested in something other than non-fiction. I stuck with what worked for a loooooong time. Which meant, the above mentioned books, which expanded his mind greatly but bored me to tears, but were not fiction AND school does require some fiction reading.

To that end, I found several AWESOME series.

This series is great. It mixes fact and fiction together and your Aspie will LOVE it. I know mine did. And if you can find a TV station that is running the program and mix the TV program with the books. I found it was wonderful. He wanted to read the book. What they have also done with this series which is AWESOME is made it into chapter books, so when you child ages out of the first level of books, there is still a set he can read. I know it was wonderful for HistoryBoy. They weave the Science facts and fiction so seamlessly even if your child isn't an Aspie, they will love them.


Once your child has graduated from the Magic School Bus chapter books or you just need more to entertain them (or yourself), I HIGHLY recommend The Magic Tree House. These cover so many Science and Social Studies subjects, HistoryBoy went gaga. The great thing about this series is they also have reference guides to go with each of the books. So once you read the books (or before you read it), you can have your reference knowledge fill, and then read then story that goes with it. Another GREAT feature of this series is that they are available in CD/mp3 form. So if you Aspie is like mine and sometimes like to take his books on the go, I can pop an mp3 on his ipod and he can listen to as he reads. It is wonderful. Now this series is recommended up to 3rd grade but I think for Aspie children who need encouragement to read fiction, these are a good choice. HistoryBoy still enjoys them.

More on this tomorrow.