Comment

Comment by Christine Brower-Cohen on July 22, 2013 at 4:44pm

Great points, Bruce.  I like the books you've referenced here and would love to see a list of titles you, or others think would be enjoyable to male students.  What I took away from the 9-14 age group, was "middle grade" an area where we are always looking for compelling books that are neither too babyish, nor too adult.  For any aspiring writers out there, you read it here, (although you probably already knew) there is a market out there!  Get writing for boys!

Comment by Bruce Deitrick Price on July 22, 2013 at 3:29pm

This is such a wonderfully revealing and controversial area. Traditionally, schools tend to push boys into reading books that are not really for boys. And this on top of not teaching them to read very well in the first place. So there really is a war on boys and it has many fronts.

 So let me just mention the problems with this announcement. First of all, why  start with age 9? We want to get them reading  before that. Second, just because a publisher, school or teacher says a book is for boys doesn't mean very much.  Ordinary grown men like to read Tom Clancy and Baldacci. So you want the early, easy versions of this. Such was the role filled by Hardy Boys books, Tom Swift, etc.  Anything else is foolhardy and perhaps disingenuous.