Boys Detective Fiction

Do kids still read the Hardy Boys? I'm never sure about these genre things. Bizarrely, the Seventh Heaven paperbacks in my teen section still circulate, so I have a lot of faith in the staying power of series. I just read two mystery novels that feature tween detectives, both of which rely heavily on genre tropes, and one of which is a pastiche of boy detective series like the Hardy Boys.* What I'm wondering is whether kids will get the references, and whether they need to get them anyway.

The Brixton Brothers and the Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity, by Mac Barnett and illustrated by the fantastic Adam Rex, is not about two brothers. It's about Steve Brixton and his best "chum" Dana, who really prefers not to get dragged into Steve's amateur detecting schemes. But Steve is obsessed with the Bailey Brothers' mystery series, so by the end of this action packed book (it includes a car chase and an escape from a sinking fishing vessel), Steve tells Dana they're going to have to call themselves "the Brixton Brothers" because it sounds better.

The best running joke in the book is that everyone believes Steve Brixton is a private detective hired by the evil "Mr. E" to help steal a national treasure--all because he follows the advice in his Bailey Brothers' Detective Handbook. Of course, the advice is ridiculous. Or at least written to help children "play" detective: "Shawn and Kevin love a good booby trap. Trapping a crook gives their knuckles a break. You can trap baddies just like the Bailey Brothers! Just make like Tarzan and dig a hole in the ground, then cover it with sticks and leaves. Crash! Your unsuspecting suspect will fall right in!"

The humor in the book is consistently on point. My favorite scene is when Steve dresses up as a sailor--including a striped shirt, fake mustache, and eye patch--to infiltrate a tough fisherman's bar. When he gets in the door, he notices everyone is wearing jeans and flannel shirts. But is he daunted? No. "Yes, Steve thought, catching his reflection in a gaudy mirror. He looked more like a sailor than anyone in the place!"

So my conclusion about whether or not kids'll get it?

In Which I check my Google Reader

And discover some wonderful things!

I'd like to say "Amen!" to this Huffington Post article about the myth of men not reading. I don't think you have to be a man to publish and select books that men will like. But if the population you serve includes, for example, Asian men in their early 20s living in urban areas, then you have to figure out what Asian men in their early 20s living in urban areas want to read. Probably not Anne Tyler, much as I love her. Sometimes you have to read stuff you're not interested in. That's why it's called your job and not something you do for fun. (via Guys Lit Wire)

And where was this list last year when I was seeking out books about the different ethnic populations in my neighborhood? It's wonderful! At this point, I actually have all the books on the Cambodian list, which makes me feel good about myself, but also sort of sad. But it's not cake to find children's books that represent South East Asian experiences, and then when you find them, you think, who wrote this? Is it accurate? So I'm very grateful for this list from the talkstory website, and I'm totally going to use the Hawaii part as a resource for one of my summer reading program activities. (via the YA YA YAs)

Finally, I was interested in the Chasing Ray review of Sources of Light, because although she doesn't take about white privilege specifically, I feel like she's alluding to it. So now I have to read this novel-about-Mississippi-during-the-civil-rights-movement and compare it to My Mother the Cheerleader, which has actually grown on me since I read it a year ago. And Summer of Kings, which I need to re-read after reading The Rock and the River, because they both have scenes in which characters discover radical Black Panther newspapers. I feel like there's an article in here somewhere.

Review: You Don't Even Know Me: Stories and Poems About Boys by Sharon Flake

This is one of those books that I wasn't even planning on reading because I knew it would be good. I try to spend my time reading the books I'm not sure about or that I think I'll have to sell to kids. But I figured Sharon Flake didn't need my help getting kids to read her book, so I just put it on the shelf.

But I'm visiting a high school on Monday and I was thinking of reading a few excerpts from new books, so I took You Don't Even Know Me back off the shelf and proceeded to read it cover to cover. I figured I might as well write about it, too.

Now, Sharon Flake has great narrative voice. No question. But what makes her books so significant is the subject matter. She's just plain writing about stuff no one else is writing about. Like wanting to hook up with an older woman or trying to help out a 9-year-old who knows more about the streets than you do.

Sharon Flake definitely writes about issues--AIDS, suicide, sex abuse, and gangs in this volume alone. But she's never preachy, and I'm trying to figure out how she does it. But there's no one way. For example, in one story, she shows us what it's like to have a caretaker who's obese. It takes an hour and a half to walk a few blocks to the shoe store. You live on disability checks. You think everyone's staring even when they're not. I'm thinking the story is about how hard it is to live in a situation like that, but it turns out the story is about how good the boy has it--and he knows it.

Review: 8th Grade Superzero by Olugbemisola Rhuday Perkovich

Ah, the 8th grade book. Where to shelve it? Kids? Young adult? I think once kids are in 8th grade, they want to read about high school, so a book like this really has more appeal to 6th graders. But this is a looooooooong one.

The force driving the plot is Reggie McKnight's campaign for president at a progressive school in New York city. To win, he has to overcome the mental image everyone has of him throwing up on stage on the first day of school.

However, Reggie doesn't declare his campaign until page 178 of 324.

That's because the author also wanted to cover Reggie's "big brother" relationship with a troubled kindergarten kid, his community service project at a homeless shelter, his worries about his dad's unemployment, the rift between him and his sometimes-clueless white friend, the spiritual questions his youth pastor raises, and his sister's attempted transformation from basketball queen to cheerleader.

I was genuinely interested in how these issues would work out, but I tended to lose one thread as another one was woven in. And a lot of the issues never got worked out. But I think that was intentional. The author is showing us real life: a messy tapestry full of loose ends. The feeling of completeness at the end of the novel comes from Reggie finding peace with himself--not from him fixing anything.

Hello, Marvelous World!

I've been reading a pretty sweet blog: White Readers Meet Black Authors. I mean, if you're white and you know that you usually read white authors, how can you resist a blog with this address: http://welcomewhitefolks.blogspot.com/?

That's how I found Wench, which I'm in the middle of. It focuses on the lives of four women, living in slavery in the South, who are forced to play the role of mistress with the white men who own them. The setting glistens hot on the page, and the characters have to make impossible choices: attempt to run away, abandoning their children and possibly endangering the lives of the slaves who remain behind? or stay in slavery, subjecting themselves to the abuse of the men and the venom of the women, hoping to convince the white men to set their children free?

Well. There's absolutely no possible transition after that. But more relevant-to-children's literature, White Readers Meet Black Authors today had a reminder about Marvelous World by Troy CLE. I ordered the first book back when Vibe magazine was calling it the black Harry Potter, and the author was already imagining the films. And then I thought it fizzled. Not so!

The series has continued, the new covers look great, and there's a book trailer!

Usurper of the Sun (Sort of) Book Review

I think I'm kind of not exactly going to finish Usurper of the Sun. Not because it's not good! And not because it's hard sci-fi!

OK, probably sort of because it's hard sci-fi. But I don't have a tiny brain, really. I think the questions the novel raises are interesting. For example: If you were going to try to communicate to aliens the concept of friendship, how would you do it? Forget about the technical aspects of sending out messages into the unknown. What images would you use? What if the aliens don't eat together? What if they don't communicate verbally? What if they don't use physical touch to show affection? What if they're like ants or microorganisms and their relationships aren't based on feelings? Tricky, huh?

So I learned a new word: Xenopsychology. Alien psychology.

But the book disappointed me in a way that has nothing to do with the genre or the quality of the writing. This was the first Haikasoru book that arrived, fully cataloged, at my library, and I was hoping it would appeal to teens. The blurb goes thus:

Aki Shiraishi is a high school student working in the astronomy club and one of the few witnesses to an amazing event—someone is building a tower on the planet Mercury. Soon, the Builders have constructed a ring around the sun, threatening the ecology of Earth with an immense shadow. Aki is inspired to pursue a career in science, and the truth. She must determine the purpose of the ring and the plans of its creators, as the survival of both species—humanity and the alien Builders—hangs in the balance.

You can understand why I thought it was going to focus on a teenager, right?

Maybe it's just a phase

One of those why-boys-don't-read theories that circulates pretty widely is that boys prefer books that awards committees, librarians, and parents (possibly publishers) consider trashy. Books with less character development and more explosions and toilets.

So these books with crazy boy appeal are actually harder for boys to get their hands on, because awards committees, librarians, and parents (who shall henceforth be referred to as literary gatekeepers) are all like, "Oh no, dear, you don't want that nasty book about exploding flatulence, you want this nice book about making friends."

Boys come to the library looking for Captain Underpants and face a wall of Junie B. Jones and Judy Moody books.

But I just read an article that makes a good, related point: it's not really that girls like more sophisticated books. It's just that the literary gatekeepers of America have embraced trashy girl books while still looking down on trashy boy books.

Double, Double, Books, Boys and Trouble

I recently did a RILINK workshop on literacy programs for boys, and I'm linking to the handouts here, since a number of people who did not attend were curious.

I read (parts of) a lot of books on raising and teaching boys in order to prepare for the workshop, and I've been mulling over these books ever since. (I was going to write a brilliant literature review of all the books, and then I discovered it had already been done better than I could have done it. Le sigh. I will confine myself to informing you that Michael Sullivan's Connecting Boys with Books relies heavily on The Trouble with Boys and The War Against Boys, which reveals something about his perspective.)

Most of these books present similar evidence for the crisis in boys' literacy:

• For the last 15 years, girls have consistently outperformed boys on standardized reading tests.
• Boys are at least twice as likely to be diagnosed with a disability that could affect their reading. And their writing.
  
• Boys are less likely than girls to go to college--the gap is even wider between African-American boys and girls.
• Boys are more likely to commit suicide or be diagnosed with a mental disturbance.

What's different about the books are the causes to which they attribute these worrisome statistics. I was interested to learn, in Raising Cain, that there are only two well documented differences between boys and girls that are caused by nature as opposed to nurture. One is that boys are more physically active. The other is that girls develop language skills earlier. (A lot of you are probably thinking, duh. But isn't it nice to have studies confirm our observations?)

This provides an interesting explanation for why elementary school boys are consistently behind girls in most indicators of reading ability: they naturally develop language skills later.

So here's my question: if it's biologically normal for boys to be behind girls in reading, then why are we freaking out about the reading gap and heaping pressure on boys?