Boy Books

I agree that its hard to find young adult boy books that the boys actually like. It seems that they don't go for the problem novels like the girls do. Books like Breathing Underwater (about abuse), seem to be preferred by girls even though they have a boy protagonist.

My favorite books to booktalk for young adult boys are Acceleration by Graham McNamee, Black and White by Paul Volponi (we also have his newer one, Rooftop, which I haven't read), and Son of the Mob by Gorman Korman. Its good to keep in mind, however, that Son of the Mob has a lot of cultural references and irony that is hard for ELL students. I tried it with an ELL book group and had to give it up and switch to another title.

I've been interested in checking out some of the new Robert Cormier books, like Tenderness, The Rag and Bone Shop and Heroes, but I haven't gotten around to it. I think all three of those sound pretty disturbing, but they are very short. I think we're looking for those two things for our audience of reading students. We don't want to talk down to them and give them young protagonists and young themes, but we don't want to give them a 400 novel either. Did you notice when our colleague booktalked Paranoid Park? That sounded really compelling, and its another one I want to read because it seems to "fit" our/their needs.

I'd like to find more sports books for lower level readers. I liked Travel Team and the Feinstein Final Four mystery is supposed to be good, but the protagonists are so young. In my past life, kids have really liked the Lipsyte books (The Contender, for example), but I've never read them. The covers of the copies we have look pretty dated. Others we should check out are How I Fell in Love and Learned to Shoot Free Throws, and Keeper.

Nonfiction is another thing we should focus on more. Boys seem to like it. More on that some other time.

Reflections on a Booktalk from a New Librarian

I recently completed my first "professional" booktalk. I must say, it was quite exciting to finally use all of the knowledge I had been storing in grad school in a real school setting.

The positives:
1. Doing the booktalk in teams of 2 made me more comfortable. I had someone else to back me up, and I felt less "on the spot".
2. Encouraging class participation makes the booktalk more interesting. This may seem obvious, but it really helps to welcome questions from students and encourage them to offer their own opinions of the books you talk about.

The main problem I encountered was that I had a lack of books that would appeal to boys. There are numerous amounts of YA books that feature female lead characters. Where are all the boys?