I have a grandson who is about to turn 7. His father, who knows the rules but doesn’t play competitively, says he has shown great interest in chess. Accordingly, I want to give him a book or two for his birthday and for Christmas. I am soliciting recommendations. The boy has a decent attention span. He knows how to castle and has at least been shown en passant, and his father can teach him algebraic notation.
I am prepared to be inundated with suggestions. Kid friendly training software may also be a viable option, so those suggestions will also be welcome.
Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual. He’ll find it impenetrably hard, will lose interest in chess as a result, and will end up doing something useful with his life.
Unfortunately my favorite introductory chess book turned out to be written by a convicted pedophile. There appear to be several books available online like “Chess for Children”, “Chess for Kids”, etc. which would probably be more suitable for a 7 year old than the classics cited earlier, although I haven’t read any of them so I don’t know which are the best. They’re visually appealing, at any rate.
I am a beginner chess teacher in New Jersey and I get a lot of use out of Dean Ippolito’s Chess Tactics for Scholastic Players and Fred Wilson & Bruce Alberston’s 202 Checkmates for Children. Both are easy to read for young children and have great diagrams and instruction.
Here is a list of beginner’s books you might find useful:
Your First Chess Games, by A.J. Gillam
The Chess Kid’s Book of Tactics, by David McEnulty
The Chess Kid’s Book of the King and Pawn Endgame, by David McEnulty
Checkmate for Children, by Kevin Stark
Each book can be read and explained by a parent or teacher. They can also be easily read by a student. There are examples and tests in the latter three books. The concepts in each book will be reinforced when reading the other books. I have used these books with a variety of students. They found the books to be fun to read, challenging but not overwhelming, and easy to immediately apply in their games.
While one of my first books was Lasker’s Manual, that book was pitched to an older player with a more sophisticated reading level. Its philosophy makes it a difficult read. The book I read and got the most out of was Reuben Fine’s “Chess the Easy Way.” Alas, I did not read these two books until I was 17 years old just before my first rated tournament. The books were in descriptive notation and required more than a little effort on my part. Neither is a book I would hand to a 7 year old.
A nice gift for a child is to buy him a nice tournament style wooden chess set. Nothing real fancy or expensive. Teach him to care for and respect the pieces and their craftsmanship the same way you would teach a child to care for his first baseball glove. He should learn not to bang the pieces. If you and he are lucky, that set will last a long time and be a bond between the giver and the recipient. I still have the wooden set my father bought for me for Christmas some 45 years ago. It is the most cherished set in my collection.
