Books of heroics and adventures

[Fat Old Guy]

There used to be a host of books about heroic or adventuresome boys (and girls) out there. Examples that come to mind are all of the various Boy Scout novels, the Border Boys, Hardy Boys (Nancy Drew for the girls), and Tom Swift (Jr and Sr). There were also the heroic/adventure novels that fall into the classics such as Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, King Arthur, Tom Sawyer, Captains Courageous, the Virginian, etc., etc., etc..

 

Like they did for Tom Sawyer, these books fired my imagination and the imagination of my friends. We'd spend summer days planning how to build a submarine only to discover that our dads would't let weld in the basement. Or we'd build heliographs and attempt to send Morse Code across the park. We zoom about on our bikes pretending that we were a) a squadron of fighters in search of Germans b) calvalry on horseback or c) if we were feeling bad, a motorcycle gang. We'd build armor out of cardboard and whack at each other with broomsticks.

 

I don't see young boys reading these sort of books anymore. What fires their imaginations today?

[mrs red feather]

My sons are now 21 and 19 and have always enjoyed reading, especially the younger. When they were little they enjoyed action heroics from TV and movies and would act out Star Trek and Star Wars, Thundercats and Ninja Turtles. I took a look at younger feather's bookcase to refresh my memory of what he was reading from about 10 to 14 years old. Besides a few of the classics you mentioned, I found lots of Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, C.L. Lewis, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ursula LeGuin, and his all-time favorite, J.R.R. Tolkien.

 

When he was in 5th grade, say about 10 years ago, he was given a Mark Twain reading list. If he read all the books on the list he would receive a prize, such as a Pizza coupon. I read them too. This was the most depressing collection of fiction I ever saw. Can't remember the titles of most of them, but nearly every one was about abandonment and carrying on against impossible odds. Almost none had intact families.

 

In non-fiction they both enjoyed "The Raft" by Robert Trumbull, about a WWII crew shot down in the Pacific and how they survived weeks on a raft. Also "Hot Zone" by Richard Preston, about the possibility of an Ebola epidemic.

 

For you modern-day adventurers I highly recommend Carolyn Alexander's "The Bounty" about the mutiny. It is fabulously researched and very well-written.

[berkshirescouter]

You forgot Harry Potter.

Anyone who writes an 800+ page book and has boys and girls standing in line to buy and read it, has to be good. All of the boys in my troop have read them and are eager for more.

[NJCubScouter]

I'd agree that "Harry Potter" fits into the category, in a modern-day sort of way. (Actually my son is watching the first "Harry Potter" movie right now. He has read the first book more times than I can count, though once you have something completely memorized you don't have to read it anymore. (Oops, he just came over and saw me writing that.)

 

Obviously the Tolkein books are again popular with kids today -- I would say considerably more than when I was a boy.

 

There are other adventure-heroism books though they seem to be more of an individual taste than the mass-popularity books of the old days such as Hardy Boys (which I never read, by the way -- around age 12 or so my taste ran more to sports-hero nonfiction and fiction -- anybody else ever read the Bronc Burnett books? I still remember reading all those 30 years ago, and I don't think they were very recent when I read them.)

 

I think we have to remember that although books are still popular, there are other forms of entertainment that are either much more accessible than "when we were young," or that we never even dreamed of. These are all competing with books. When I was a boy the idea of having a collection of movies in your home that you could watch whenever you want was sheer fantasy... and yet today my son can watch the "Star Wars" movies or a number of others and get heroism/adventure without reading a book. This might be a bad thing if he didn't also read, but he does.

[scoutmom]

My son has read the entire collection of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Lemony Snicket. The are a very tongue-in-cheek look at three siblings who become orphans and all the terrible things that happen to them. They always manage to overcome one obstacle to find another one waiting for them.

 

He also enjoyed the Artemis Fowl books. They are about a 12 to 13 year old "criminal mastermind" and his adventures trying to steal "the fairy gold". Very high tech, which appeals to my video game addicted son, with elf, and centaurs and trolls thrown in too.

 

Also on his book shelf are the Harry Potter books and a ton of Goosebumps books. He also enjoys reading magazines - especially Nintendo Power!

[NJCubScouter]

Scoutmom, my son has also read the Series of Unfortunate Events books, but I didn't know enough about them to know whether they fall into the "heroism/adventure" category. As for Artemis Fowl, my son has described those to me as being about a boy who is "sometimes good, sometimes very bad," so I left him out, too.

 

Even Harry Potter, of course, does not always behave in an ideal manner. His ultimate intentions are always good, but he lets his fears and emotions get in the way of doing the right thing sometimes. Maybe authors these days are making more of an effort to reflect life and people as they actually are rather than some "heroic" ideal.

[scoutmom]

NJ,

 

The Series of Unfortunate events can oly be described as "adventure" in my opinion. These kids have to overcome some incredible obstacles. They are all completely fictional, though, like climbing an elevator chaft with your teeth! They were so unrealistic, they were funny. Yes. I read them. I try to read the things my son is interested in.

 

I found the Artemis Fowl books to be very well written. Yes. Artemis is "sometimes good, sometimes very bad" but if you read the books you will see why. This character has a lot on his plate, so to speak. I enjoyed Artemis Fowl and recommedn reading them if you ever have some free time when you're not doing Scout stuff. You know, like 3 AM, maybe.

 

[mrs red feather]

I somehow forgot Gary Paulsen. My guys loved "Hatchet" about a 13-year-old boy surviving alone in the Canadian wilderness after a plane crash. Paulsen has also written some terrific memoirs about training dog teams and running the Iditerod.

[OldGreyEagle]

Can't compare to Jack London's The Call of the WIld

[Marty_Doyle]

I think my son has read most of the "current" popular books - Harry Potter, the Baudelaire sibling's Series of Unfortunate Events (the audio books narrated by Tim Curry are really enetertaining for long car trips). But he has also raided my boxes of old books still stored in the attic, which leans closer to what FOG mentioned. Jack London, R.L. Stevenson, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, the Hardy Boys, Ivanhoe, Three Musketeers, Man in the Iron Mask, some Horatio Hornblower, some Rafael Sabatini, Robin Hood (supplemented by a video of the Errol Flynn movie), and so on.... Mom now requires some prior review of the reading material, but he will devour most of it of given a chance. In conjuction with the movies, he has read The Hobbit and two thirds of the Rings triology by Tolkien.

 

An interesting idea in here. What books would one include in a modern day version of the Boy Scouts of America "Every Boy's Library", to fire up the boy's imaginations, and possibly hook them into Scouting?

Hardy Boys are kind of dated (would today's boys know what a roadster is?), and Tom Swift is even more dated. Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Mark Twain are considered politically incorrect.

Seton and Beard's early works are hard to obtain.

All of those Pee Wee Harris and Banner Boys and Boy Scouts in World War I stories are also kind of dated, and replaced by Indiana Jones.

What list would we develop to become a Cub or Boy Scout's summer reading list?

[OldGreyEagle]

Where and who said Mark Twain is Politically inCorrect?

[Laurie]

Cub Reading Ideas: Magic Tree House books are an easy read and full of adventure. However, by the end of 2nd grade, my sons were done with them, but they're a great introduction to chapter books as well as to history, science, and so much more. My youngest would devour these books and then ask the most interesting questions; I liked them because they kept him reading and thinking about what he read.

 

We have lots of classics, and early on our boys were reading C.S. Lewis' Chronicle of Narnia on their own; they now are into Tolkien. Oldest son loves Hardy Boys and a variety of classics. A recent read of his that he liked a lot was Johnny Tremain. Our bookshelves contain many of the books FOG named.(This message has been edited by Laurie)

[Marty_Doyle]

I would say the fact that both The Adventures of Tom Saywer and The Adventures of Huck Finn consistently make the American Library Asssociation's list of top 100 challenged (to be removed from library shelves) books each year. Plus a number of court cases to remove them from public libaries in various venues across the country. A suit by the Pennsylvania NAACP to remove it, based upon Twains' use of certain "when published acceptable" colloquialisms to describe Jim, etc. would qualify it as non-PC.

I don't agree. But much of America might.(This message has been edited by Marty_Doyle)

[OldGreyEagle]

Some people are morons, and I wonder if any of them ever read the books. I know what you are referring to Marty, and I would be just as happy to have Jim referred to as Big Jim or just Jim.

 

The reason I say some people are morons are because if you are familiar with Huckleberry Finn at all you know the charactor "Jim" is one of the bravest, most loyal, hard working, kind, sensitive people in the book. Twain wrote it that way to make a point. The Duke and the King were fine examples of Carpetbaggers. I can see replacing a word that has been downgraded to unaccpetable, but the entirety of the book portrays Jim in the best possible manner(This message has been edited by OldGreyEagle)

[VH_50]

Here's another vote for the works of Robert Heinlein (virtually anything he published in the 1950s), which were Scouting-age favorites for both me and my (now college-age) stepson. The astronomy's now obsolete, but the adventure holds up well.

 

If there are still boys out there who like the Horatio Hornblower sea stories, the first ten volumes or so of Alexander Kent's (similar) Richard Bolitho series are a good follow-up.

 

Alistair MacLean ("The Guns of Navarone," etc.) is marvellous for contemporar--mid-20th century--adventure with no sex and (at most) PG-13 violence.

 

Somebody suggested Caroline Alexander's _The Bounty_. In that same category, *don't* miss Alfred Lansing's _Endurance_, about the Shackelton expedition to the Antarctic . . . one of the great true-adventure books of all time.

 

Happy reading!