My son has a love/hate relationship with reading. He is required to read half an hour a day for school and some days it's like wrestling a slick pig to get him to open a book. I am always trying to find books that he will choose to read on his own. My only bad comment about this series is that they don't come out fast enough! When he opened the Amazon package (the purchase was a surprise), I was in the other room, but I could hear how excited and happy he was to get it. By the time I got from the kitchen to the living room, he was already sitting on the couch with his head buried in it, and that is where he stayed for the rest of the evening. No whining to watch tv or play video games, no complaining about doing his homework, just happy reading. I even had to take it away from him to keep him from reading it after he was supposed to have gone to bed.I've seen some complaints from parents about topic choices in this book. I know that as the series moves on there are some themes that are more adult, but I think that's pretty common with longer series that start out geared toward the 8 to 10 year old reader. As the kids who started with these books get older, the topics the books cover get more mature. The author knows he has to do that to retain his original audience, just as J.K. Rowling had Harry Potter mature for her audience. In our house it's our job to make the decision about when our kids are ready to read about certain topics, not the author's. If we had thought the parts about puberty were too mature for him, we would have waited to give him the book, not complain about the author's decision to write them. Personally I suspect that what's in the book is a lot milder than what my son hears from his 5th grade classmates.I recommend this book and this series to parents who are struggling to get their boys to read. You may find that your son can identify with these characters, and that he will stay engaged with the story more easily because he does. It's a beautiful thing to match a reluctant reader to the right book.
