Hey all I am the mother of a precocious reader. At 5yo he read Ender's Game and understood the issues of genocide and emotional impact on the protagonist. At 8yo he read Ready Player One and fell in love with it. He has also read Warcross by Marie Lu and is awaiting its sequel with rabid enthusiasm. He is an avid consumer of boardgames (Kickstarter is like crack!) and he has played D&D. We don't have a console (mainly because he has no self control whatsoever with screens, which is understandable considering he is only 8) but he has coded in Scratch and is fascinated by game design in both boardgames and electronic games. My issues are these: he needs high-level thematic engagement with a PG rating. No real sex, no really gory violence. He loves MMORPG based novels but without reading them all myself before passing them on, I am at a loss as to what will be appropriate for him. All suggestions are welcome. Thank you so much in advance for your assistance!
Welcome aboard. A list of PG - LITRPG would be helpful. Tower of Gates is on that level, but I'd wait until I relaunch ... eventually.
Welcome to the forum, Pancakes! Off the top of my head, I cannot name any MMORPG novels with your specifications. You might look at the D-List Supervillian series by Jim Bernheimer. Fast, fun and interesting. There are some very rare instances of harsh language, and there are suggestions of romantic relationships, but nothing directly speaking of intercourse. So, probably PG 13. Hard Luck Hank Series by Steven Campbell. Kind of fun SF. Hank is a mutant thug, and in each novel, he is trying to solve a problem/mystery of a sort, which might be of interest to your son. Clean language, violence but more like shooting with lasers and such, no gore, and no sexual content. Creative characters and no book in the series is exactly the same. Not quite PG 13 There is The Zombie-Driven Life, by David Wood. It's about a high-school sophomore surviving in a zombie apocalypse, targeted at young adults. It's a short, fun book, that doesn't have gory violence. The main character does kiss a girl or two, but nothing more than that. PG Within before March, my publisher will be releasing the first novel in my Monsters, Maces and Magic series, with the second novel to be released shortly thereafter. It's LitRPG, with no harsh language, other than a rare use of 'asshole' or the like. The target audience is above your son's age, but there's not sexual content. Since it's characters in a fantasy world with medieval weapons and magic, and monsters, there is violence, but nothing gory in the least. Not quite PG 13 My First Civilization's Legacy series, fantasy, except for not being MMORPG, might be right up his alley. PG I hope you're able to find some reading material of interest. As you're demonstrating with your search, it's so important to keep kids reading, and finding appropriate material at their level is vital.
Most of the Russian LitRPG is pretty tame. James Patton’s Office Wars would also fit the bill, if memory serves. There’s a lot of raunchy humor, but I’m pretty sure it’d go over an 8 year old’s head. Maybe Emerilia? And probably Continue Online, but I don’t think CO really moves at a speed, plot-wise, that would hold an 8 year old’s attention. I don’t think there’s really much in litrpg that’s all that YA friendly, especially when it comes to wanting to avoid gore specifically. There are quite a few out that haven’t got much in the way of “adult” content, but most of them get fairly gory.
Hi, Pancakes - I was that sort of reader myself when I was a kid. As it stands, like everyone else mentioned, at the moment most LitRPG is aimed squarely at adults, so there's going to be some sex and violence. You might want to be careful with the Russian novels as the ones I've read also seem to contain an unpleasant amount of homophobia and misogyny, and you don't want a kid that young seeing that as "normal". "Threadbare", about a toy bear brought to life as a golem with absolutely no life experience and how he gradually explores his mysterious world and gets swept up in human politics when his owner is kidnapped, is quite good. There's no sex (since the MC is a toy) and although there are deaths, they are more cartoonish than realistically violent. https://www.amazon.com/Threadbare-S...TF8&qid=1517164883&sr=8-1&keywords=threadbare
True, I forgot about the casual sexism and racism in russian LitRPG. Viergacht makes a valid point with that.
Elements of Wrath is good, some romance, but not sex or excessive violence. More about the importance of friends and trusting others with a nice dash of the dangers of hacking.
Just my personal opinion, but I think it's better to encourage him to read more than just one genre. While I understand his interest in LitRPG, fantasy and sci-fi existed long before LitRPG was created and in fact, LitRPG is just a sub-genre of them (doing a great job of bringing the worlds together, I admit). What about getting him started on the books we all read when we were growing up and that made us fall in love with all these fantasy worlds brought to life by science?
Sure. And Dragonriders of Pern, the Belgariad, D'Rizzt and the Companions, Wizard of Earthsea, Magician, NIMH, Chronicles of Amber... And that's just a handful of fantasy series. There are so many more... Not to mention all the sci-fi books and series!
I've got a great story about the author of Dragonriders of Pern. One of my favorite memories from college honestly. Don't forget about RedWall either, and yes, I have a story about him too.
I’ve got a signed hardcover edition of one of the Dragonriders of Pern books somewhere. I was in the hospital recovering from surgery to fix a really badly broken arm, and a candy striper - of all people - went out to a book signing that Ms. McCaffrey was doing at a bookstore down the streeet from the hospital and bought me a copy of her book. I forget which one it was, but it was 1992 so a quick google has me guessing it was either Damia or All the Weyrs of Pern. Long story short, she, for some reason, wrote me a really nice full page note instead of the usual empty one line “best wishes” type of autograph authors usually do at signings. I never met her, but she took the time to encourage a young reader and that speaks volumes about the kind of person I believe her to be. I’d also recommend Mercedes Lackey for younger readers. Her Valdemar novels specifically, but her take on fairy tales and urban fantasy are also top notch (even if I’d probably not recommend her urban fantasy for any 8 year old, no matter how precocious). Tracy Hickman & Margaret Weis, CJ Cherryh, Terry Goodkind, David Eddings, Fred Saberhagen, Morgan Llewelyn, Lloyd Alexander, Robert Asprin, Piers Anthony, Terry Pratchett, Ursula K LeGuin (Earthsea specifically, the rest can get a bit murky for a kid), Andrzej Sapkowski, Michael Moorcock, CS Lewis, Orson Scott Card, LE Modessitt, Jr., and Jane Yolen are all authors that fostered my love of reading in general, let alone the sf/f genres.
I'd stay away from Terry Goodkind and Piers Anthony for now, though. Goodkind has some very explicit sex scenes and some torture scenes, iirc, and Piers Anthony had a thing about pedophilia. Eddings is great for younger readers, specifically the Belgariad, Pratchett might be tricky simply because the humour depends a lot on language skills. He did write a few books for younger readers, though. Also check out Gaiman's Graveyard Book, sort of a modern take on The Jungle Book.
The Piers Anthony thing was overblown nonsense. He wrote a child rape scene in a book, and that stemmed the entire thing - and to be honest, the entire book was full of screwed up, disturbing horror, and was a failed experiment in branching out to break out of typecasting (kinda like how Elizabeth Berkeley went from being Jessie on Saved By the Bell, to being a stripper in the movie Showgirls). It’s like ... why do we assume that the author of a novel participates in the type of things they write whereas we don’t bat an eyelash at disbelieving the same from say, the screenwriters behind the Saw and Hostel franchises? Or god forbid, Human Centipede? We don’t assume that the screenwriters of slasher flicks spend their time murdering high school girls, so why assume that authors are somehow worse? As far as Terry Goodkind goes, yeah, I completely forgot about all of the red leather brigade stuff in his books. Probably not the best for an 8 year old.
Rape scene? I'm talking about the scene in which Anthony has a five-year old describe how she wanted sex and then describes how it led up to her quite literally asking for it. I'm liberal as hell, but going into detail about a five-year old asking for sex as if that justifies it has removed him from my reading list - permanently. Besides, I never really liked his books anyway, I only read one or two of them and they annoyed me more than they amused me.
That’s still rape. But I still recommend Xanth, and maybe the Incarnations of Immortality series (I’m fuzzy on Incarnations, but Xanth was written specifically for a YA audience). If he can handle moderate adult themes and you’re willing to have some discussions about a few topics with him, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser would work, too. There’s a lot of lustiness in the books but I’d put them at the border between PG and PG-13. Nothing in those that I recall as being much worse than prime time television is nowadays.
It is, of course, your prerogative to recommend what you like. But, as stated, I cannot in good conscience recommend anything by Piers Anthony to anybody, and most definitely not to a an 8-year old.
So much in this thread since I last looked - thank you so much for all of your assistance. TWErvin2 - That is a great place to start, I can't thank you enough! CheshirePhoenix - I will look at CO. He can work with a slow pace well enough, it's just if the themes/ideas overall are interesting; he is an odd little 8yo. Viergacht - That sounds great! Will look it up, thank you. Gryphon - I am adding it to my (now growing) list. Yay! Readsalot - Thanks for your input. As a high school English teacher I'm all over many, many novels that I know about from the many other genres that I read. He reads quickly and voraciously, but will then linger and re-read. For example when he was 3yo he read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Wizard of Oz over and over again (and yes, he read them himself, I didn't read them to him as many people assume), so he has read a lot more than most 8yos I guess. I also subscribe to the Neil Gaiman belief that engaging readers is the most important thing of all. If right now he wants to read a crazy number of LitRPG novels that I can procure, then what is the real harm in the long run? The harm you suggest stems from an assumption that he will therefore only ever read that genre which isn't a safe one. Who knows what will grab his attention next? There's a long life ahead of this 8yo I hope. I definitely won't purchase anything that normalises homophobia or an incongruity in sexual consent, thank you for the heads-up.
Your kid might enjoy some books that are LitRPG like in that they're following the classic fantasy trope of a main character, often with unique powers, getting more accomplished as the plot progresses. I can recommend - "Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain" - the daughter of two famous superheroes in a comic book style world discovers she has "mad scientist" powers, the ability to built fantastically complex machines, and after a run in with the sidekick of a hero, she and her two friends' alternate identities get labeled villains. They have to stop a real villain, try to redeem themselves, and dodge misguided heros, and it's generally a ton of fun. Anything by Daniel Pinkwater, with "Lizard Music" and "Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl" being two of my favorites. Young protagonists who have adventures in a humorous, complex and gently surreal world. "The Silent Strength of Stones" - a teenager with the gift of being able to talk people into buying things they don't need isn't looking forward to another summer working at his dad's store, until his attention is caught by a weird new family vacationing in one of the lakeside cabins. The daughter can disappear into thin air, the son can turn into a wolf, and that's just the start of discovering their powers and his own.
I heartily second the recommendation for Daniel Pinkwater. My favorite of his is probably The Snarkout Boys And The Avocado Of Death. I won’t bother to summarize it, as it should be perfectly obvious what it’s about.
