Books for kids

The other day we had to present a book suitable for children age 10-12. I had no idea what to pick, even though it got some suggestions from a book about extensive reading. Instead, I simply solved the problem by going to the library and talked to one of the librarians working in the children's section. Finally, I had one by Eoin Colfer. It turned about to be an easy read and pretty enjoyable. Then  came the more difficult task: to find suitable books for teens. It was 100% fantasy, or close to it. Except for HP I haven't been close to a fantasy book in my life. I should probably read one, before I die. It was also quite hard to help the students, because they did not really know what kind of books they liked. My supervisor had divided their interest in "don't exist" (fantasy) and "do exist" (crime novels etc). That wasn't the categories I had expected to hear, but it seemed liked the students understood it. I also ended up writing some of the example books down. Unfortunately, it still ended being a difficult task to help the students. These boys really need to read more, they were clueless more or less. However, I did find a book I'd like to investigate more: Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis.