The Pirate would rather not read.

The Pirate is supposed to read for 100 minutes a week. This works out to 15 a day, or, as we're trying this week, 30 minutes on Monday through Thursday. The Pirate hates it. Yep, I said it, My Second Grader Hates To Read.  As you can imagine, this is horrifying to me.

The problem isn't with the reading itself. He can read. He reads slightly above grade level, officially. He reads Wii instructions easily. He reads Lego descriptions at Amazon.com without issue. But "books are so boring, mom!" The problem is that books for second graders, early reader books, ARE boring. It's like the cartoon "Little Bear" in book form. Yawn.  The problem with chapter books is that he is already huge fans of things like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter- the movies. He wants that in his books too, but Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings both start so slowly, and his comprehension and patience aren't quite there for a long slow buildup. (For a second grader, a long buildup is anything over a couple pages.)

I've spent a lot of time paging through the level three readers finding interesting ones, and I've been compiling a list of potential chapter books for a second grade boy. Here's the list so far:

• The Horrible Harry series by Suzy Kline
• The Mercy Watson series by Kate Dicamillo
• The A to Z Mysteries (our first try here was a no go.)
• Marvin Redpost series by Louis Sacher
• The Geronimo Stilton series by Geronimo Stilton
• Author Daniel Pinkwater (a brief glance makes me think these may be too hard, Second-Grade Ape has potential though)
• Mrs. Noodlekugel, also by Daniel Pinkwater, looks a little young
• The Time Warp Trioby Jon Scieszka
• The Beast Quest series by Adam Blade
• The Secrets of Droon series by Tony Abbott
• The My Weird School Daze series by Dan Gutman 

Suggestions from the comments:

• The Magic Tree House by Mary Pope Osborne
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan. I think these will be a little hard for him still.
• The Secret Agent Jack Stalwart Book by Elizabeth Singer Hunt
• Ready, Freddy by Abby Klein
• Dragonbreath
• Roscoe Riley Rules by Katherine Applegate
• The Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective series by Donald J. Sobol (I thought these were for older kids, happy to see they are not.

(Please note, most links go to the first book in the series on Amazon.)

Any other suggestions for action packed books for little boys?  I'm not picky at all (reading is reading is reading, there are no trashy kid's books), but I'd rather it be text in linear form and not cartoon/comic/manga style.  I know there is someone out there who is going to suggest books from their youth. I will not argue that the classics aren't any good, but I will argue that the classics are slow. Slow is our problem. If your classic is slow, especially slow to start, he's not gonna enjoy it.