“I, Robot” comes to mind. What else?
[Question] What’s a good book for a technically-minded 11-year old?
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.
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).
HPMOR has quite a complex story, not sure I would have been able to follow/enjoy it at 11.
Doesn’t matter, because HPMOR is engaging enough on a chapter-by-chapter basis. I read lots of books when I was a kid when I didn’t understand the overarching plot. As long as I had a reasonable expectation that cool stuff would happen in the next chapter, I’d keep reading. I read “Stand On Zanzibar” repeatedly as a child, and didn’t understand the plot until I reread it as an adult last year. Same with the detective novel “A Deadly Shade of Gold”. I read it for the fistfights, snappy dialogue, and insights into adult life. The plot was lost on me.
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.
Any of the popular math books by Robert and Ellen Kaplan or Ian Stewart, including Ian Stewart’s fiction. Things like The Art of the Infinite, or Flatterland.
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos or The Dragons of Eden
Basically anything by Asimov. Also Terry Pratchett if the kid is more fantasy- than sci-fi- oriented (less science, but plenty of philosophy and reasoning about the implications of new and old ideas)
Alice in Wonderland if you include context about what Lewis Caroll was really talking about. Also The Phantom Tollbooth if they haven’t read it yet. Even older classics like things by Jules Verne and HG Wells can be interesting choices. If the kid has only ever read more modern sci-fi and fantasy, it can be interesting to learn how people used to think about the future or other worlds. I personally really liked Last and First Men and Starmaker; I think I read those around the end of high school, but nothing in them was particularly advanced IIRC.
It might be a little early for Godel Escher Bach unless they’re particularly into formal mathematics, but probably in another 2-3 years that’s one to put on the list.
Plato and Aristotle. At this age the kid has technically been taught all the math and science needed to understand anything they wrote.
This one is more dependent on specific interests, but growing up I loved to cook, and lived in a house of people who loved to cook. For me, books like On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee (and later, The Food Lab by Kenji Lopez-Alt and Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter) were basically my introduction to organic chemistry. In my sister’s words, for me, the kitchen is just another lab. They also helped build some very useful life skills.
Not sure if there’s a specific reason for limiting to just books, but there’s also some excellent youtube channels I’d recommend to such a kid. Veritasium, eigenchris, Vsauce, numberphile, Isaac Arthur, and even things like TierZoo can be great. Some of the videos may be a bit advanced for now, but just skip around and explore.
Similarly, if they don’t mind video games that look old and dated, I learned more from playing Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri than I did from almost any dozen books at that age. Apparently there is now an open source remake in progress?
This is also an “11 is probably too young for most” recommendation, there are some parts that are somewhat disturbing, but Ra by qntm (also available as a free online serial) is excellent but very weird. It has the hardest of hard magic systems. Like, literally, the word “mage” in story is “MagE” because they’re a kind of engineer. There’s even a whole appendix on why “make something invisible” is actually really complicated.
If they like literature and wordplay as well as more mathy technical stuff, Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next books are a lot of fun. Surprising density of math, philosophy, and sci-fi concepts for a series about jumping into classic novels. Good for sparking “Hey, what are they referencing here?” conversations.
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.
Ok, then sounds like they enjoy a mix of hard science and absurd humor. If they’re anything like I was, then one way to get someone like that to pay attention to stories and people involves choosing ones that have a good amount of worldbuilding with well-designed, comprehensible systems and technologies you can think about as you read, and that reward paying close attention with details that turn out to matter way later.
Ian Stewart’s fiction has a similar vibe as Randall Munroe’s books, but using the math and humor to tell stories instead of teach science.
The Robert and Ellen Kaplan books are not fiction, but they’re half trying to teach math through creative play with concepts (they were also the founders of The Math Circle) half history of math. If you want them to start applying what they’re learning in real life, this is a good bit of nonfiction to suggest.
And I’d definitely try Asimov, especially the Foundation books as others have mentioned, for a hard sci-fi story that’s really about the people and civilization and the forces that move and shape them.
The stuff I put in #4 pushes more towards being story-forward, but again with a mix of hard sci-fi and playful absurdity.
#10 has that too, but really appreciating those relies a lot on being at least familiar with the general tropes and plots of classic literature and famous authors. Then again, it’s a great book for someone who likes to randomly stop reading and look things up when there’s a reference they don’t know. Lots of potential for pointing towards other interests and gaining cultural literacy.
I’d recommend Terry Pratchett to anyone. You don’t have to read Discworld in order, you can focus on the arcs that you like. The witch-focused books are really centered on individual responsibility and critical thinking. The wizard-focused books have a recurring theme of the limitations of academic research and high technology. The Death-focused books have a theme of unpacking myth and culture. And the Moist von Lipwig books are about how new technologies reshape society. They’re the kind of books you can just read for fun and then, months and years later, you think back on and have a-ha! moments. And if you’re at all worried about this kid needing to understand that other people aren’t always open and honest about their intentions (good or not), petty much every storyline has characters acting for complex reasons you have to read between the lines at first to see.
I’d hold off on Godel Escher Bach for a couple of years, but when they’re ready for it, it basically alternates between math and comp sci, philosophy of math and comp sci, and absurdist humor.
Doesn’t sound like Ra would be a good fit. Maybe in another 5-7 years.
And if you don’t mind pushing a video game, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is basically a fictional encyclopedia of the future. I haven’t tried that remake, but if it’s far enough along to run well, someone like you described would probably really enjoy it and learn a lot from it. Take a look at this list of quotes from the game and you’ll see what I mean. The Civ games have nations as the factions, but in SMAC each faction has a core philosophy, and you have freedom to create your own units by mixing and matching technologies.
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 different fronts all at once. Its loooong. Its written somewhat in academic-ese. And the subject matter is advanced. So any 11 year old who could deal with one of that trinity also has to face the other two.
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.
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.
Besides abstractapplic’s excellent answer,
A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
The Martian by Andy Weir
Paleontology: A Brief History of Life by Ian Tattersall
Richard Feynmann’s books
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.
You mention in another comment that your kid reads the encyclopaedia for fun, in which case I don’t think The Martian would be too complex, no?
I’m also reminded of how I started perusing the encyclopaedia for fun at age 7. At first I understood basically nothing (English isn’t my native language), but I really liked certain pictures and diagrams and keep going back to them wanting to learn more, realising that I’d comprehend say 20% more each time, which taught me to chase exponential growth in comprehension. Might be worth teaching that habit.
That brings back memories. We used to have an english Encyclopaedia as well. Similar story. I still recall how gloomy an impression it made on me. It felt like the world might be a weird, dark and dangerous place, at least compared to the rosy picture that the local communist propaganda was trying to paint.
Thinking about the encyclopedia point, what about collections of short stories? Something like Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories is great for browsing through, and over time the year-by-year format gives a kind of historiography of the future and a sense of what people in each decade were concerned and thinking about.
Also since no one has mentioned Asimov’s own short stories, I’d suggest The Last Question. Technically ends with a bit of blasphemy from a certain POV, but it doesn’t sound like that’s a problem here.
If the kid is enjoying the robot stories then that’s definitely the place to start. Foundation goes well after robots.
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.
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 really don’t remember anything contemporary when I read them in the 90s and early 2000s.
Also some of the later books, especially the Tiffany Aching arc, are specifically written with a younger audience in mind, to the point that when I read them in high school and college I felt I was too old for them.
It is the literary, TV and movie references, a lot of stuff also tied to technology and social developments of the 80′s-00′s (particularly Ank-Morpork situated stories) and a lot of classical and allusions. ‘Education’ used to lean on common knowledge of a relatively narrow corpus of literature and history Shakespeare, chivalry, European history, classics etc for the social advantage those common references gave and was thus fed to boomers and gen-x, y but I think it’s now rapidly slipping into obscurity as few younger people read and schools shift away from teaching it in face of all that’s new in the world. I guess there are a lot of jokes that pre-teens will get, but so many that they will miss. Seems a waste of such delightful prose.
And here I was hoping it would prompt someone to look things up or talk about them with the person who recommended the book.
Wow. Worm? That’s pretty dark. Also a million words or so. Does your kid enjoy it?
Yeah, powering through it. I’ve tried adult Fiction and Sci-Fi but he’s not interested in it yet—not grokking adult motivations, attitudes and behaviors yet, so feeding him stuff that he enjoys to foster habit of reading.
Yes, I am seeing that as well. Technical/philosophical stuff is fine, but the psychology in adult fiction is too complex for an 11-years old to enjoy.
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?)