In my last post, Teaching Our Sons to Love Reading, I talked about the link between strong reading skills and a boy’s probable success in school (and life!)
Just one more thought: For moms (or female teachers) in particular, it can be a challenge to adjust ourselves to a boy’s perspective on life.
As we search for beauty and harmony, they exercise the eternal battle of good and evil; as we delight in music and the arts, they perfect farting on cue.
Are these stereotypes? The result of gender conditioning in western society?
Whatever.
My point – as of this moment – is that in order to engage our sons on the reading front, we need to view the world through their eyes, for just a little while.
If we want them to love reading, then we must help them find books to read about things that they love.
And we must send both direct and indirect signals that their choice of reading material is absolutely okay.
We might wiggle and squirm a bit in private, but if our sons want to read Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy, Part 1: The Night of the Nasty Nostril Nuggets – or just about anything else committed to the printed page – we need to join in and celebrate.
In my last post, I described several fictional series that my sons have enjoyed reading. After publishing that article, I realized that I had forgotten the entire non-fiction genre that I like to call, “All Things Stinky and Gross.”
Here are some additional recommendations to help get our boys reading more:
At our house, the hands-down favorite is anything with the words, Ripley’s Believe It or Not in the title. (I should say, this is my sons’ hands-down favorite. I usually cannot make it through a single page without gagging.) You might also try...
Oh Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty, by Joy Masoff. The title says it all. An engaging format includes lots of black-and-white illustrations and some totally gross experiments to try at home. If your child would enjoy learning more about cockroaches, pimples and poop, this one’s for you.
Oh Yikes! History’s Grossest Moments, also by Joy Masoff, will give you a similarly putrid perspective on all things historical.
While not always gross or stinky, lists of all kinds are interesting to my sons. We like to get our annual dosage of useless information from books like Guinness World Records 2009, or the Scholastic Book of World Records 2009.
For a broader reading experience focused on current events, try Time for Kids: Almanac 2009. There is something for everyone here in short, consumable bites. Chock full of photos, puzzles and games, you might be tempted to grab this one for yourself.
Last, but far from least: Celebrate boyhood in all its glory with the international bestseller, The Dangerous Book for Boys. Covering everything from paper airplanes to the Alamo, it's purposely nostalgic approach will appeal to fathers and grandfathers as much as school-age boys.
Are these the books you would choose to snuggle with on a rainy afternoon? Maybe not, but give one of them to your son and see what happens.
My younger son loves making me squirm by reading his Ripley’s out loud to me, while my older son delights in quizzing me from the Scholastic Book of World Records and celebrating my ignorance.
Perhaps I should rename this genre to “All Books That Can Effectively Be Used to Torture Mom.”
Related post: Teaching Our Sons to Love Reading
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