Google Scrooge McDuck.

DS8 just read a book that he could not put down. It is one of the first times that I have heard peels of laughter and cackles of evil joy coming from his room as he read. I can't say that I have read it yet, because as soon as my son finished it, my DH snatched to book up. So I am recommending a book sight unseen, which makes me a little bit nervous... but here goes:

Simon Bloom, The Gravity Keeper by Michael Reisman

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0525479228/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

It is for any young boy who loves science... particularly physics!! DS excitedly jabbered on and on about how one of the good characters would use gravity to bend space in order to get out of trouble or stop the evil character from doing something dastardly. Another time the hero (an 11-year-old boy) manipulated the space/time continuum to send the evil adult villain back in time so that she became a harmless little girl.

I don't know what reading level it is? 5th through 7th maybe? It has almost 300 pages in it, and DS soared through it solo in about 3 days. I'll try to read it this week sometime and report back.

Sounds interesting, but AR (Acclerated Reader) only puts it at level 4.9, which I think makes it .1 lower than DS's lower limit, . Of course he can read it just for fun, but we have to start the year off playing the points game.

Also, DS went through a period of time where he was uninterested in books, around age 7.5 I believe. I had become nervous that there was a mismatch between his reading level and some of the content that he was being exposed to. So I was trying to bring home books from the library that I thought were *safe* for him to read. I realized, after a few weeks of this, that he was turning his nose up to books that held no interest to him, probably because they were safe. He started reading a series of books called, Star Wars Galaxy of Fear, which I do not recommend. They are very, very scary books. But that is what he wanted to read. So I opened the floodgates a little, and allowed him to read more emotionally challenging books, such as Harry Potter, well the first four books at least. All of a sudden, he could not put books down again. I can't remember all of the books that he read this summer, but he was particularly fond of the Guardian of Ga'Hoole books. He read the first 11 books of the series in 11 days (one day per book), and is waiting impatiently for book 12 from the library. I really thought that the Guardian books would have been too much for him. There are young owls who have been kidnapped from their families and vampire bats who feed off of the young owls, draining them emotionally, and somehow make them unable to fly away free and return home. But somehow he wants to process these strong emotions through the safety of a book. Is this a good thing? I don't know? The gifted psychologist that we saw over the summer seemed to think that it was great, and showed emotional maturity. She seemed to feel that books were how we learned to deal with strong emotions from a removed standpoint, a kind of a safety net, so to speak. It makes me very nervous, so I'm not advocating it in any way!

I don't know if that helps or applies to your DS at all, but I thought that I would throw it out there.

I did try to ask how scary the Gravity Keeper was, by the way, before recommending it. He said that it wasn't violent and I don't think anyone got hurt in it. One of the good characters in the book had an accident, according to my son, and it was a cliffhanger for part of the book to see if he was okay or not. Just to let you know.

ebeth - The Gravity Keeper sounds GREAT for DS! I just added it to my Amazon cart. I tried to combine it w/ an open order I placed YESTERDAY and AMazon said the 2 orders are coming from different centers so I can't combine them. Darn it lol.

Do you have any other recommendation I should add to my cart to get Super Saving Shipping?

Cackling out of control...

For the life of me I cannot recall a series of books I read when I was 7 about a group of kids in a small town who use science to get into some wild, hilarious adventures - a sort of johnny quest meets Huck Finn.

One story has them building a flying saucer out of balsa and fabric that goes out of control and terrorizes the town. It was so funny I laughed so hard that I threw up.


--

But I do recall reading this series when I was 9 and liked it. In the 5th grade our teacher started reading it to us - and I had already read it - so she let me read it aloud. I remember waking up one night during a storm and looking outside and seeing a water tower in the rain shafts and lightening and thought it was a Tripod!!!!

If they can handle Harry Potter, then they will like and be able to deal with this. There are a few scenes where major characters sacrifice themselves for their friends and I do remember crying over this.

I have not read the book put out in 1988, but the others are good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tripods

Austin - is it the Mad Scientist Club?

My DS7 who reads very well but limits his reading selections to video game manuals has recently become very interested in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. He loves them. He is now working on his own series! (Well... he has the titles of the books ready anyway!) I am reading them along with him and I really like them. He also liked Bunnicula (someone else mentioned that earlier in the thread.)

Hmmmm... I'll have to think for a while. I'll get back to you!

I did notice that the same author, Michael Reisman, is coming out with a sequel to the Gravity Keeper in Feb 2009. It is called The Octopus Effect, and seems to be the biology equivalent of the Gravity Keeper. It looks very, very fun!!

I had not bumped into this author before. I don't know if this is his first book or not, but I will have to keep an eye out for him.

http://www.michaelreisman.com/index.php?page=home

Hey Dottie! Where did you get an AR score for this book? I was just guessing, based on a book that I had never read. LOL! Sorry about missing the AR score by 0.1. Ouch! I looked it up on Scholastic Books and it was not in their system, as far as I could tell. Do you have some secret web site for book info that you have been holding out on us?

Here's where I always check...

http://www.renlearn.com/store/quiz_home.asp#quicksearch

Now if only my school had access to everything I find there, . The school doesn't have the test anyway, so it's a moot point for us.