I have a high school student who is a Very Reluctant reader. Tutoring him is a challenge, as not only does he not want to read the books for his course, his dad agrees that he doesn't have to read all the books. We ran into trouble when the assignment was directly from To Kill a Mockingbird and he had not (and did not want to) read it.
He had to read something. We couldn't do all the assignments from Tom Sawyer (which I'm pretty sure he read at least most of).
He finally agreed to read Leviathan by Scott Westfeld. It's a steampunk novel, and WWI alternate history, and his parents had given it to him for Christmas, and he had immediately tossed it on a shelf and ignored it until recently. And, lo and behold, he enjoyed it. I mean, really enjoyed it. Enough that his parents got him the sequels and he's reading them.
One of his favourite things is that the book describes how things work. One side has been building mechanical beasts and means of travel, and the other has been playing with biology and coming up with their own contraptions and animals. The book talks a lot about how they work, more than just "it flies because it does". My student is mechanically inclined and that appealed to him.
So.... I read the book. It was not a bad story. The characters are interesting, the story moves fairly quickly, and it wasn't too predictable. The steampunk bits were just like any fantasy book, so not that strange for anyone who has read a lot of fantasy (raises hand). I probably won't read the sequels, but that's nothing about the story and more about being the wrong age with the wrong interests. I like my historical fiction a bit more realistic.
I'd definitely recommend it for teen boys who like reading about adventure, war, close escapes, and mechanics and the like.
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