Math textbooks. Did you know that you can just buy math textbooks which are "several years too advanced for you"? And that due to economies of scale and the objectivity of their subject matter, they tend to be of both high and consistent quality? Not getting my parents to do this at that age is something I still regret decades later.
Or did you specifically mean fiction? If so, you're asking for fiction recommendations on the grew-up-reading-HPMOR website, we're obviously going to recommend HPMOR (especially if they've already read Harry Potter, but it's still good if you only know the broad strokes).
The Way Things Work was formative for me, and they just came out with a new edition. It's just simple, enjoyably-illustrated explanations of mechanics, simple machines, complex machines, electronics, etc.
I am assuming you're trying not to overly bias the responses, but there's obviously a lot of facts about this particular 11 year old that could very much change the recommendations. Without that context, I'm trying to think back to what I was reading at that age (in the late 90s, so not much new on my list, there may be better out there now), or what I wish I'd known to read at that age. I think at that age the thing I most enjoyed and most grew from were books that taught me how to play with concepts and ideas in a principled way in order to think about them in new contexts, as well as some history of science and math.
Thanks! A lot of stuff to check here.
The context is: The kid reads encyclopaedia for fun, really interested in the history of technology, likes Randall Munroe books, but I was looking for fiction to provide a more complex and nuanced view of world, going beyond the bare technicalities.
GEB
Much as I liked the book I think its not a good recomendation for an 11 year old. There are definitely maths-y 11 year olds who would really enjoy the subject matter once they get into it. (Stuff about formal systems and so on). But if we gave GEB to such an 11 year old I think the dozens of pages at the beginning on the history of music and Bach running around getting donations would repel most of them. (Urgh, mum tricked me into reading about classical music).
I am all for giving young people a challenge, but I think GEB is challenging on too many d...
but only the dialogues?
actually, it probably needs a re-ordering. place the really terse stuff in an appendix, put the dialogues in the beginning, etc.
Besides abstractapplic's excellent answer,
Thanks! Asimov I am trying right now. I find the robot stories quite naive nowadays, but it seems that it may be just the right level of complexity not to overwhelm the kid and make him abandon the book on the one hand and yet keep him interested on the other. Foundation series I am going to try next. I recall reading it at 15, so maybe 11 is a bit early, but yes, its mechanistic view of society can make you interested in social sciences even if you are naturally a STEM type. Ender's game - great! I forgot about that one. As for The Martian not sure, it feels a bit too complex, but maybe it's worth a try.
I've just started my 11yr old tech minded son reading the Worm web serial by John Macrae (free and online, longer than Harry potter series). It's a bit grim/dark and violent, but an amazing and compelling sci-fi meditation on superheroes and personal struggles. A more brutal and sophisticated world build along lines of popular 'my hero academia' anime that my boys watched compulsively. 1000's of fanfics too.
Stories from Larry Niven's "known space" universe. Lots of fun overcoming-challenges short stories and novellas that revolve around interesting physics or problems or ideas. And the follow up Man-Kzin War series by various invited authors have some really great stories too with a strong martial bent that will likely appeal to most boys.
At that age I read and loved Dune, The stars my destination (aka Tiger Tiger, a sci fi riff on Comte de Monte Christo), Enders Game. I think Terry Pratchett humor needs a more sophisticated adult knowledge base, with culture references that are dating badly.
My 11yr old loved the Expanse TV series, though I haven't given them the books to read yet and I can't recommend the transhumanism anime Pantheon on Amazon highly enough - its one of best sci fi series of all time.
All good to introduce more adult problems and thinking to kids in an exciting context.
I think Terry Pratchett humor needs a more sophisticated adult knowledge base, with culture references that are dating badly.'
Good points I hadn't considered. Do you think that applies as much to a kid who reads encyclopedias? I wasn't an encyclopedia reader and started reading Pratchett at around 14, and didn't really have issues following the references. And aren't most of the cultural references more centuries-old than decades-old? I am sure there are some that are aging badly, and it's been a long while since I've spent time around 11 year olds, but I ...
Here is a category of book that I really loved at that age: non-embarrasing novels about how adults do stuff. Since, for me, that age was in 1973, the particular books I name might be obsolete. There’s a series of novels by Arthur Hailey, with titles like “Hotel” and “Airport”, that are set inside the titular institutions, and follow people as they deal with problems and interact with each other. And there is no, or at least minimal, sex, so they’re not icky to a kid. They’re not idealized; there is a reasonable degree of fallibility, venality and scheming, but that is also fascinating. And all the motivations, and the way the systems work, is clearly explained, so it can be understood by an unsophisticated reader.
These books were bestsellers back in the day, so you might be able to find a copy in the library. See if he likes it!
Another novel in this vein is “The view from the fortieth floor”, which is about a badly managed magazine going bankrupt. Doesn’t sound amazing, I know, but if you’re a kid, who’s never seen bad managers blunder into ineluctable financial doom, it’s really neat.
My wife is a middle school librarian. I’ll ask her when I see her for more books like this.
Code by Charles Petzold. It gives a ground-up understanding of how computers actually work, starting slowly and without assuming any knowledge on the reader's part. It's basically a less textbooky alternative to The Elements of Computing Systems by Nisan and Schocken, which is great but probably a bit much for a young kid.
I re-read "I Robot" recently, and I don't think it's particularly good. A better Asimov is "The Gods Themselves" (but note that there is some degree of sexuality, though not of the sort I would say that an 11-year should be shielded from).
I'd also recommend "The Flying Sorcerers", by David Gerrold and Larry Niven. It helps if they've read some other science fiction (this is sf, not fantasy), in order to get the puns.
My 9yo has recently enjoyed Ender’s Game, Harry Potter, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and What If. He recently asked to borrow my The Vital Question (it came up in conversation about abiogenesis) and he’s mostly following it so far but has occasional questions for me, we’ll see how far he gets or if he loses steam.
For non-books, he wanted to do Khan academy cosmology / astronomy, I think he did one big unit of Khan academy math before losing interest, he likes Eureka crates (little kits to build your own soap dispenser, rivet press, ukulele, whatever, they come once a month, good gift), lotsa video games, and he was doing DuoLingo Spanish every night (he has a streak, he’s a total sucker for gamification) but to my dismay decided to switch to the rather less practical DuoLingo Klingon. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Lewis Dartnell's The Knowledge - How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch is a sort of grand tour for technological underpinnings of industrial civilization and how you might bootstrap them. Might be a bit dry, but it's popular writing and if the kid's already reading encyclopedias it should fit right in. Lots of concrete details about specific technologies.
Might go for a left field option and see what he makes of Euclid's Elements.
Only one mention of Jules Verne in answers seems weird to me.
First and foremost, "The Mysterious Island". (But maybe it has already been read at nine?)
Have you tried asking the kid? Perhaps they already have perspective matching the real world on some topic.
I agree this is an important step. But also, for many kids that age, they have no idea what's out there to ask for. In 6th grade, at school we had a bookshelf of books you could borrow and, if you wrote a report on them within a certain timeframe, keep. That helped me discover at least 2 interests I still have to this day (philosophy and deep history) that I might not have found for years otherwise. Similarly, the next year someone I barely knew (but who apparently knew me pretty well) bought me a copy of GEB, and that was genuinely life-changing for me. Not sure if or when I'd have come across that myself. Heck, in 5th grade I didn't even know Star Wars and Star Trek and D&D had associated book series at all until I saw them on my uncle's bookshelf. I'd somehow never heard of Tolkien until 8th grade. And I was someone who averaged a book a week as a kid!
Exactly. You can't make the kid read something, but if he doesn't know the book exists he's not going to read it for sure.
"I, Robot" comes to mind. What else?