When my boys were at the stage where they were ready to move beyond the “Leard to Read” books but weren’t quite ready for most chapter books. I headed over to the local Barnes and Noble and perused the beginning chapter books and found a lot of fairies, cute pets, Disney princess, rainbow fairies, and Captain Underpants. I don’t like bathroom humor, so I threw out that beginning chapter book series for boys. I know many don’t have a problem with that, but I do. Ever since then I’ve been keeping an eye out for beginning chapter book series for boys to come up with a great list to share with you. I finally found the final book series to add in, and now I’m sharing this booklist.
** Here’s my caveat, my boys have a lot of stereotypical boy interests, so they had zero interest in rainbow fairy horses. As a young kid I would have loved these books too.**
(there are ALL the affiliate links in here)
5 beginning chapter book series for boys
- Terra Prime– This is the series that let me finally put this list together. It’s a sci-fi book series following a young boy as his family heads off to colonize a new world. I’ve read the first couple of books in the series, and I love the protagonist. I’m stuck with the dilemma if I talk about a character introduced that I particularly love, I’ll give away major plot points in the book. He’s a little older than the kids who will be reading this are. I’ve got a full review of the first book going up on Lorehaven in a few months.
- A to Z Mysteries– This is the first book series my son fell in love with 8 years ago. For the longest time Superman hunted down all of the books in this series, long after he’d outgrown the books for reading level. He loved the interactions between the main characters and figuring out how each mystery is solved.
- Magic Treehouse Books– I was shocked my kids never got into these books. The large number of homeschoolers I know using these books to supplement their history is absolutely insane. Side note, for Christian readers, The Imagination Station series is similar in feeling. I feel like my kids would have loved these books a bit more since they were such big Adventures in Odyssey fans, but the series came out after they were done with beginning reader books.
- Time Warp Trio series– Another goofy boy book series that travels in time. It’s interesting to me that so many books for young boys are history series…
- Hank the Cowdog series– All of my kids loved Hang the Cowdog, but my boys especially loved it. They’re told in first person point of view from Hank, who believes he’s in charge of security on the ranch. A nice part of these books, you the parent won’t hate the books (though listening to lots and lots of them on a road trip can get tiring). I think of the books on this list, these might be the longest.
All right, that’s my 5 beginning chapter book series for boys that I recommend (and an accidental sixth series).
What book series would you recommend to get boys excited about reading?
Some more book posts
- Nebraska book list
- Dog book list
- Australia book list
- Russia book list
- Picture books to read while grieving
“Reading Manga” by Craig Stanfill is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
“Boy Reading on a Red Carpet, Pride of Bilbao Ferry, Bay of Biscay, 2004” by Dr John2005 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
J was always in this awkward space where he wanted to like the boy books but then he didn’t like violence/anything scary. He ultimately found his way in the Marvel universe but that wasn’t until he got older.