Hmmm. It's actually quite difficult for me to judge reluctant-reader compatibility, as I could at no point in my life have been described as a reluctant reader. ;-)
Having said that, I think that the thing with a lot of layered books is that you don't necessarily have to engage with all the layers. Ender's Game works as a plain exciting action/adventure story, which is I think where it attracts younger/reluctant readers, especially as Ender is young throughout the whole book. There are of course a lot of dark elements which not all children will enjoy/cope with: Amazon lists it as having a reading age of 9-12, but it probably depends a lot on what kind of nine- or twelve-year-old.
I didn't really pay attention to age categories for books until quite recently. I don't think I was properly aware of the children's/YA/adult's split for a long time: I just read books. Though I did read more 'boy' books than 'girl' books, so I'm also at a slight loss as to where to steer the post-Twilight teen girl. It looks like you're getting a bunch of useful recommendations from others, though, so that's good.
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Having said that, I think that the thing with a lot of layered books is that you don't necessarily have to engage with all the layers. Ender's Game works as a plain exciting action/adventure story, which is I think where it attracts younger/reluctant readers, especially as Ender is young throughout the whole book. There are of course a lot of dark elements which not all children will enjoy/cope with: Amazon lists it as having a reading age of 9-12, but it probably depends a lot on what kind of nine- or twelve-year-old.
I didn't really pay attention to age categories for books until quite recently. I don't think I was properly aware of the children's/YA/adult's split for a long time: I just read books. Though I did read more 'boy' books than 'girl' books, so I'm also at a slight loss as to where to steer the post-Twilight teen girl. It looks like you're getting a bunch of useful recommendations from others, though, so that's good.