What The Boys Are Reading

There have been conversations around here this week with each son about books so I thought I'd share.

My Fifth Grader--
I am going to sound like a broken record about my hatred of Accelerated Reader (AR) but it just astounds me.  This son is a stellar student and yet his teachers bug him about reading certain books.  I read to him every night (with a Mad Lib and a Picture Puzzle book thrown in) and he always has a book in his 30 lb backpack.  The school just had its book fair and he bought two books and was pretty excited about one called The Whisper, which is a continuation of one called The Roar by Emma Clayton (bought at last spring's Book Fair).  They are about boy/girl twins and kids that have to compete in violent virtual reality games. Turns out that there is no Accelerated Reader (AR) quiz for these books.  (BTW I loved your previous comments on AR reading and quizzes).  In class the other day his teacher (he has several and she teachers "gifted" language arts and math) suggested that he finish the media center book (which is AR) before starting the new book he just bought.

Here is what I have to say about that:

Tonight at dinner I asked him if she said anything today about his new book.  I made sure Hubs was listening.  She told the class that if you don't make your AR points you will get an "N" on your report card and will be off the Gold or Silver honor roll.  Teacher conferences are coming up--fun times.  Read what you want, we tell him.  It pains me that we even have to have conversations like this with him.

Middle Son
He reads!  He reads!  I love to help this 8th grader find books--I am his personal library shopper just like I am the TJ Maxx clothes shopper for them.   Once I brought home a book from Goodwill that he has enjoyed--it is edited by Jon Scieszka called Guys Write for Guys Read -- short stories by various favorite of boys' authors writing about being boys.  Another similarly edited is called: Guys Read: Funny Business.  Check out the Guys Read website with reading lists.  I really enjoyed watching these interview segments of the author--stories of growing up with 5 other brothers and antics at dinner table, being a male teacher, and more.  I really appreciated what he had to say about how boys like to read magazines and graphic novels and non-fiction and that's OK.


Oldest Son
AR points don't exist in high school--yay!  This 10th grader is our guinea pig--truly--he navigates his way and we learn along with him.  But about books--this boy does not read books.  In 9th grade he had to read books that were written so, so long ago like Silas Marner (snore) and Dickens.  I actually said to him to him once as he tried to write about them: Google ideas and notes--I don't care!

In the beginning of the month he had to choose a book from a long list.  Of course I found this out at the last minute which gave him 3 weeks to read a book but I took the list and crossed off every girly book and we went to Barnes & Noble and I put many, many in a pile and he flipped through them, made sure there was lots of conversation, read a few pages of each, put back the ones had too much scenery (Cormac McCarthy) and he picked a winner!!  (Tim O'Brien's) The Things They Carried, a combination of memoir, non-fiction and short story style about the Vietnam War.  He read it!  And enjoyed it!  And we just had another conversation just this second! He just said he has heard so much about other wars and not this one and learned a lot. Told me there were a lot of F-bombs in it.  After he picked it out I then remembered to tell my closest friend about what he chose--she teaches AP English in California--and I learned it is her favorite book and was part of her thesis.  Wow!