. . .
However today, I can take none of the credit for this post.
detailed resource for you to read.
The guilty party is . . .
We did some great book clubs with dads and boys,
a good way to foster male mentors.
Jon Scieszka, of
Stinky Cheese fame, is a huge supporter of
Guys Read, and has lists on his website. His biography,
Knucklehead, is a book for guys, talks about his childhood growing up in a family of 5 boys. Really funny, not hard to read.
I work at the library doing outreach to schools grades K-12.
So I'm always doing book talks: talking with kids
about what they're reading etc.
Please don't forget non-fiction when pitching to boys. One thing we have to get over is that reading = fiction.
Reading can equal sports stats, almanacs, poetry, graphic novels. So here's some titles I've seen hands grab:Heck Where the Bad Kids Go by Portland author
Dale Basye...the 2 middle school protagonists are bad, but too young to go to Hell, so they end up in Heck, which is like...ugh! Middle school.
The sequel is now out too,
Rapacia the Second Circle of Heck. At one school book talk I did, ALL the boys wanted to read this, and NONE of the girls. I did a podcast interview with Dale.
Podcast posted HERE Mummies; the Newest, Coolest and Creepiest from Around the World. Think mummies are just found in Egypt? Think again, there's bog mummies, Peruvian mummies, mummies preserved in ice...and my favorite in this book are some Eastern monks that drank special herbs, meditated...and mummified themselves! Check out the pictures in this book if you don't believe me.
Just starting to read?
Luke on the Loose is a fantastic graphic novel with a controlled vocabulary. Luke's a kid that can't stop chasing pigeons, so he chases them all over New York City. This is
published by Toon Books, Art Spiegelman and his wife
Francis Mouly, and they have a really good line-up of graphic novel readers.
Visit them HEREFor 2-4th grade boys, don't miss
The Dunderheads, by
Paul Fleischman, about a group of kids who have a horrible awful teacher...and figure out how to use their talents, to get revenge.
For older boys who are into sports, I recommend the novels of
Mike Lupica. ( I liked
Heat). They talk about sports, but work in other issues as well. Heat is about a boy with fantastic baseball talent, but also involves immigrations issues, and competition between boys.
The Juvie Three is another one for middle school boys, about three boys in trouble with the law, who are assigned to live with a social worker in an apt. in NYC. When the social worker is injured in a fall, and loses all memory, the boys decide they must do everything just as if he were still around, so the authorities won't send them back to jail....but can they pull it off? Especially when one of them becomes a rock star, another falls in love, and the third is pulled back towards his life of crime....
And yes, I'm working on 2 books for boys...because I love writing humor, a lot of what I like falls into the 'what boys like' category, and I often have boy protagonists. As an author, when I book talked my book,
Bugs Before Time, I often got asked by kids, "Why did you, a girl, write about bugs?" Answer: "Because they fascinate me." : )
I hope this helps and do please take a look at some of these great titles!
Thanks Cathy.
These add to the growing number of
BOOKS BOYS WILL READ!
of Books for Children
