The Nook Color is a very good reader, I have nothing agaisnt it at all but its not a large format reader. Those are the Bookeen and the Amazon Kindle DX. The bookeen also excells at foreign langeuge books such as German or French or Latin. Do you forsee any of those textbooks he will use in a foreign languege? Do you see him taking french or german or another langeuge? Do you see him taking advanced math classes where he will need to deal with latin characters? If your answer is yes to any of these then try the bookeen first.
http://www.bookeen.com/store/usa/ or
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002GYWHSQ/...l_1asn6n632r_e