Reddit reviews Why Buildings Stand Up: The Strength of Architecture

Strunk and White's The Elements of Style

Salvadori's Why Buildings Stand Up and Why Buildings Fall Down

Tufte's Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative , especially the excerpt Visual and Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions.

There’s a great book, Why Buildings Stand Up, and its follow up, Why Buildings Fall Down.

edit: added links to Amazon, and switched the chronology.

You can try Why Buildings Stand Up if you are interested in structural or architectural engineering. If I recall correctly, there is at least one chapter on the basics of statics which any engineer would take (but not necessarily use).

Anything structural/architectural is going to be a little tough at that age/price. For toys, the best I can think of is a K'Nex Bridge Set which explains some good structural principles. Unfortunately it's designed for grades 3-5.

Maybe Why Buildings Stand Up and Why Buildings Fall Down? They're a fun book combo that explains a lot of basic architecture and what happens when things go wrong. Gets a little technical but a high school student interested in physics should be able to get through it.

If you think he might be interested in computers/electrical, an Arduino starter kit would be fantastic

This book is an excellent explanation of the fundamentals of architecture.

Here's another engineering primer book: Why buildings stand up

Easily accompanied by: Why Buildings Fall Down

I took a bunch of statics and structural design courses in college, but remember before I did, I read this book which was helpful.

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Buildings-Stand-Up-Architecture/dp/0393306763

Take an online statics class, they get into trusses and 0 force members.

No problem, if you haven't already I would suggest reading:

https://www.amazon.com/European-Building-Construction-Illustrated-Francis/dp/1119953170/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494355026&sr=8-1&keywords=european+building+illustrated

https://www.amazon.com/Building-Construction-Illustrated-Francis-Ching/dp/1118458346/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494354977&sr=8-1&keywords=building+construction+illustrated

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Buildings-Stand-Up-Architecture/dp/0393306763/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1494355012&sr=8-2&keywords=strength+of+architecture

and

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0306812835/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Software/dp/0735611319

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226458121

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226750213

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0201835959

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393306763

https://www.amazon.com/dp/039331152X

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393061329

For Civil / Structural engineers:

Why Buildings Stand Up

Alternatively

Why Buildings Fall Down