Dad's Summer Reading Program: Satisfying Book Recommendations

Having started Dad's Summer Reading Program two years ago, I can now qualify it as a moderate success.  The original objective of getting our younger son to read more might have happened anyway, but it seemed to kick start him that year, and he's been a pretty solid pleasure reader since then.

This year, the boys raced out to their first incentive milestone and then flagged a bit.  Family vacation and two weeks at camp cut reading time, although our older son reprised his adorable vacation habit of reading Dave Barry books aloud with his cousin who's about a year older.

Although the quantity of reading has not been fabulous, I was very satisfied when two books that I picked up at the library unbidden for our rising eighth grader resonated nicely.  Competent Mother and I both really enjoyed Lois Lowry's A Summer To Die.  Actually, that's the book that turned me into a reader-for-pleasure.  CM also loved Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.  Although the boy raved about neither book, he finished both of them before we knew it and said - with a thirteen-year-old's* nonchalance, "Oh yeah.  I liked them."  Super pleased that the (recent) classics still appeal, despite all of the new options.