Monday, March 13, 2006

Boys and Books

This Slate article on children's reading for boys struck some familiar notes for me -- my older son has definitely been one to primarily "read for information" from earliest childhood, absorbing nonfiction books with diagrams, charts, and stats on subjects such as construction, fire trucks, baseball, and NASCAR. As a young teen he still leans toward nonfiction reading, particularly books on WWII such as DAY OF INFAMY.

However, he also loved listening to Wilder's FARMER BOY when he was younger, and there have been other fiction books that have struck a chord with him along the way.

My younger son, meanwhile, loves biographies but is also hooked on chapter books by Beverly Cleary (like RIBSY) and Carolyn Haywood (HERE'S A PENNY) -- so although some generalizations about boys and reading may "fit" at first glance, I suspect it's very individual from child to child.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Has J tried Thirty Seconds Over Toyko by Ted Larson? My library had an abridged version, but the complete book was recently released. It's hard to find on Amazon for some reason, but here's the link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1574885081/sr=8-1/qid=1142296789/ref=sr_1_1/102-6397778-1051317?%5Fencoding=UTF8

The movie of the same name was based on this book. (If the link doesn't display, let me know. And you can borrow mine if he's interested.)

4:44 PM  
Blogger Laura said...

That is a wonderful idea! He hasn't read it, although he's wached the Spencer Tracy movie. That is just his kind of topic. :)

We need to visit the library this week and will check to see if it's available. Thank you so much for offering to lend it! Sounds great.

9:36 AM  

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