Football Playoff Reads!

Bring on the NFL playoffs, the bowl games, and some great reads for the football fans in your life. Check these out:

Michael Lewis. The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game. Norton, 2007. NONFICTION

Michael Oher went from an unknown street kid in Memphis to one of the hottest prospects in the upcoming NFL draft. Michael Lewis not only tells this young man's incredible story, but puts it in the context of the evolving game of professional football, the lurid world of big-time college football, race relations, and economic realities. The story bounces from one perspective to another so quickly he makes narrative nonfiction writing look like a music video, with astonishing results. The book is beyond gripping, and the best sports book of the year for those teenage boys who dream of playing professional football or just being able to talk ball with dad.

Carl Deuker. Gym Candy. Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

The problem with sports is that no matter how good you are, there is always someone better. And the better you are, the more that hurts. There is a phrase they use in football: "One man to beat". If you had one man to beat to fulfill your lifelong dream, how far would you go to beat him? With the steroid scandal in baseball fresh on everyone's minds, "Gym Candy" takes an exceptionally raw look at the temptation to do anything to be the best. Most disturbingly, this isn't a multi-millionaire athlete trying to buy one more year, one more record, this is a normal American teenager. Hold tight, this one hits hard.

Tim Green. Football Genius. HarperCollins, 2007.

A fantastical football book from a real professional football player. Is football a game of physical strength or football smarts? More rests on the answer to that question than you may think: people's jobs, their careers, the hopes of one middle school football genius, and the season of the Atlanta Falcons. But how do you convince a professional football team that they need the help of a scrawny kid with a neat parlor trick?

John Grisham. Playing for Pizza. Doubleday, 2007.

John Feinstein. Cover-Up: Mystery at the Super Bowl. Knopf, 2007.

Mike Lupica. Two Minute Drill. (Mike Lupica's Comeback Kids) Philomel, 2007.

Mike Lupica is writing the new, and far superior, version of the Matt Christopher books. Short sports stories aimed at the elementary school reader. Yes, they are formulaic and there is the necessary childhood playground angst, but the sports take center stage and these will have an audience. "Two-Minute Drill" is the story of the proverbial last kid picked for the pick-up game, with one special skill that could make all the difference in the big game if he can only hold on long enough to get to that all important last two minutes.

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Gift ideas for boy readers (and nonreaders!)
Current mood: cold

Looking for great gift book ideas for boys? Don't forget the nonfiction! Here are two big, bold, highly visual nonfiction titles new for the holidays!

Chris Woodford & Jon Woodcock. Cool Stuff 2.0 and How it Works. Dorling Kindersley, 2007.

From how a jackhammer or a laser works to scateboard simulators to robots that can read and react to human emotions, to a mechanical cat that farts air freshener, here is the inside scoop in full color.

And also the original... Chris Woodford, et al. Cool Stuff and How it Works. Dorling Kindersley, 2005.

Thomas R. Holtz, Illustrated by Luis V. Rey. Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Utp-ToDate Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages. Random House, 2007.

I know, we have lots of dinosaur books, but not like this one! It is huge, with page-length articles on all sorts of dinosaur behavior. Perhaps its best feature, though, is the full-action illustrations that just pop right off the page. This one book is good for countless hours of browsing fun for even the most rabid dinosaur fan.

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Football Feast!

John Grisham's new book isn't just for adults. Make sure you put it in the hands of all your teen football fans.

"Playing for Pizza" follows the final demise of the career of a once-promising professional quarterback. After blowing the biggest lead in history, he must escape murderous fans and find somewhere to play football (because not playing football is not an option) where nobody watches the NFL. How far will he go to play the game he loves? You have no idea!

"Playing for Pizza" is one of the best sports books of the year. Also make sure you have:

John Feinstein, "Cover-Up: Mystery at the Super Bowl"

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Subcultures, counter-cultures and other Alt-readings

We all know some teenagers and tweenagers who are just obsessed with (fill in the blank - alternative music, high-revving engines, skateboarding, ect..)! (Maybe you are one of them.) And we are probably all aware of the futility of pushing reading in the face of such single-mindedness. The answer, of course, is to have reading that feeds the need. Without question, fan magazines are the first and best answer, but it is great to have a few books to offer as well. Here are a few recent titles to hand the adolescent or pre-adolescent obsessed. By definition, a lot of these types of books are underground favorites, often small run, small press books with limited audiences so they can be hard to find. Reply with your favorite cultish must-reads!

Punk Rock:   "Born to Rock", by Gordon Korman

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Heavy Metal Music: "Heavy Metal and You", by Chris Krovatin

Heavy metal boy, society girl, it's like Romeo and Juliet! Well, sort of... it's Romea and Juliet with ammo belts.

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Skate Boarding:  "Getting Air", by Dan Gutman

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Martial Arts: Tales of the Otori (Series), by Lian Hearn 

Otori Takeo is bound by faith to The Hidden, a secretive religious group that is being hunted to extinction, by honor to the Otori, a proud warrior clan, and by blood to the Tribe, a mystical guild of spys and assassins. Everyone wants a piece of Takeo, and if they can't have it they want him dead. He will need every weapon he has, both in his hands and in his head if he is going to survive in this fantasy realm set in feudal Japan.

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Custom Rides/Gearheads: "Drift X" (Series), by Todd Strasser

            Slide or Die. (Drift X, Book 1). Simon Pulse, 2006.
            Battle Drift. (Drift X, Book 2). Simon Pulse, 2006.
            Sidewayz Glory. (Drift X, Book 3). Simon Pulse, 2006.

Sometimes Kennin wondered if there could be a better sensation in life than the feeling of tires breaking loose. With a loud squeal of rubber and a cloud of white smoke, the GTO's tail whipped around in a 180-degree turn... Wheels still spinning and screaming, Kennin straightened the car out and took off down the mountain road, using a feint drift to set up the first curve. In the rearview mirror a pair of headlights popped into view, with a rack of red and blue flashing lights above…

Healing and toeing while working the clutch, Kennin never let the GTO's tach drop under 4,500 rpm or its tires find traction. In the headlights a large boulder appreared, just inside the corner of the next turn. Kennin aimed the nose of the car toward it. Beside him in the passenger seat, Tito braced his hands against the dashboard and screamed. Kennin couldn't blame his friend for freaking. Working the luth with his left foot as he heeled and toed the accelerator and break, he drifted the GTO past the boulder, the nose of the car missing the rock by inches…

The winding mountain road was mostly tight, dropping turns perfect for linking drift after drift. The police cars' sirens and lights grew fainter as they lost more and more ground braking for the turns. Meanwhile, Kennin was now right on Slide or Die's tail.

"Hey! Watch it!" Once again Tito braced his hands against the dashboard. "Look out! You're gonna T-bone him!"

The two cars went into the next curve drifting side by side in a cloud of white smoke with barely inches separating them… Tires squeeling and smoking, Kennin kept the GTO's tach above 4,000 rpm as he and Chris drifted through another set of turns… Chris put the nose of the 240 SX into the next curve, but he'd misjudged the grade… Kennin saw the opportunity to go wide, putting the rear tires briefly on the gravel shoulder; then he jumped back onto the pavement and angled into the next curve.

Only now Chris Craven in his 240 SX was behind him.

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Professional Wrestling: "The Secret Life of Doctor Demented", by Dan Gutman

"Secret Life" stories are usually the mild mannered public persona, and the dark side that nobody knows about. But what kind of secret life can you have when everyone knows you as the most hated villain in professional wrestling?

Reply to this post with your favorite fan-obsessed titles!

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Angst, Angst, and More Angst
Current mood: pensive

Jake Wizner. "Spanking Shakespeare." Random House, 2007.

Teen angst.
Boy angst.
Jewish angst.

These are three rich traditions in literature, and three things that generally make me pass on a book. In general, I am looking for books with high boy-appeal, and moaning about my pathetic life doesn't usually qualify. Then I get my hands on this first novel full of snot, bowel movements, and subversive adolescent stunts. What am I supposed to do with this?

Sure there is plenty of angst of all sorts, plus the required alcoholic fathers, depressed mothers, and torturingly indifferent girls, but there are lots of great laughs too.

Why is this angst-ridden book better than so many others? Face it, this Wizner guy can write. The story unfolds quickly and lightly. The only time the writing becomes cumbersome is when he is making fun of angst-ridden writing. He even makes a crack about Philip Roth, the king of teen boy Jewish angst.

Spanking Shakespeare may not be this year's king of boy books, but it will appeal to quite a few high school boys. (Not for middle schoolers - the language is a bit rough and the subject matter will not resonate with anyone who isn't going through, or hasn't already gone through, all the trials of adolescence.) Look for this to be a crossover book with appeal to girls as well; indeed the format is more girl-friendly anyways.

Another crossover book:

Gutman, Dan. "The Get Rich Quick Club." HarperCollins, 2004.

Q: If you sold lemonade at 25 cents a glass, how many glasses would you have to sell to make a million dollars?
A: 4 million glasses of lemonade!
Q: If you washed cars for two dollars a car, how many cars would you have to wash to make a million dollars?
A: 500 thousand cars!
Q: If a UFO landed in front of you, how many pictures of it would you have to sell to make a million dollars?
A: One!

Which way would you choose?

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Chess Season is Here Again!

The Scholastic (kids) Chess season begins soon after school does, and I am a firm believer that chess is a great way to get kids exercising their minds, because it is a ton of fun! Check out these articles on chess, my students, and the benefits of the game. Don't miss the picture in the last article; it will keep you laughing for a week!

NH Chess Champion:

http://www.ryereflections.org/servlet/pluto?state=3030347061676530303757656250616765303032696430303434363735

Librarians Believes Chess Can Get Kids Off the Couch:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/02/12/librarian_believes_chess_can_move_kids_off_the_couch/

Seacoast Kids Capture State Chess Titles

http://archive.seacoastonline.com/news/03282007/nhnews-ph-g-chess.html

... and you have to see the picture on this one...

Chess Master Shows No Mercy:

http://archive.seacoastonline.com/2005news/11282005/news/75336.htm

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Two New Sports Books.

There are surprisingly few good sports books for kids and teenagers these days. Here are two exceptions.

Dan Gutman. Satch & Me: A Baseball Card Adventure. HarperCollins, 2006.

     "This is the great Josh Gibson. The Brozed Bambino. Prob'bly the greatest hitter in baseball history. Hey Josh, is it true you hit 84 homers in 1936? Is it true you batted .600 one year?
     "It's true," Gibson sighed. "All of it."
     "Numbers don't mean nothin'," one of the other players said. "I remember this one time we were playin' in Pittsburgh and Josh hit one outta sight. Looked like it was never gonna come down. The next day we were playin' in Philly and this ball comes flying out of the sky. Somebody caught it and the ump says to Josh, 'Yer out! Yesterday in Pittsburgh!' " (pp. 57-58)

and, John Feinstein. Cover-Up: Mystery at the Super Bowl. Knopf, 2007.

Dan Gutman writes about the game, John Feinstein writes about the world around the game. Like Mike Lupica, Feinstein has used his experience as a sports journalist, and his spot on the ESPN show "The Sports Reporters" to springboard a writing career.

Some other great recent sports books for kids and teens:

John Feinstein. Last Shot: A Final Four Mystery. Knopf, 2005.
Dan Gutman. Babe & Me: A Baseball Card Adventure. HarperCollins, 2000.
Gordon Korman. The Chicken Doesn't Skate. Scholastic, 1996.
Mike Lupica. Heat. Philomel, 2006.
Mike Lupica. Travel Team. Philomel, 2004.
Chris Lynch. Gold Dust. HarperCollins, 2000.
Alfred Martino. Pinned. Harcourt, 2005.
Paulsen, Gary. How Angel Peterson Got His Name, and Other Outrageous Tales of Extreme Sports. Random House, 2003.  
John H. Ritter. The Boy Who Saved Baseball. Philomel, 2003.
David Skuy. Off the Crossbar. The Writer's Collective, 2006. 

What else belongs on this list? Respond with your votes.  

For more great books for guys, make sure you check out www.talestoldtall.com/booksforboys. Check back often, new books added every week!

7:54 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

A high-energy pair of new action stories

You can never get enough action/adventure stories, here are two new good ones along with my booktalks:

Dan Gutman. Getting Air. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.

What do you call:

A couple of skateboarding guys who are forced to wear dresses…

A stewardess who is forced to eat bugs…

And a grandmother who just lost all her friends in a plane crash?

In Dan Gutman's Getting Air, you'd call them the lucky ones.

Graham Salisbury. Night of the Howling Dogs. New York: Wendy Lamb Books (A Division of Random House), 2007.

We're dead, I thought as I heard the ocean churning toward us. Rumbling in, slow at first, then rising up, faster and faster.

"Pop!" Mike shouted, trying to run toward the coconut grove. He never made it.

Water rushed in. It grabbed my ankles, swirled around them, and rose higher. I tried to slog inland, but there was nowhere to go. Louie flashed his light out at the mountain of white water boiling toward us as the earthj continued to sink, taking us down with it. He whipped the light back toward the cliff. Boulders flashed in the beam, tumbling down. In the eerie light, two huge monsters bounced over our shelter, crushing it, then rolled on to vanish in the oncoming sea.

"Louie!" I howled. The sea was bearing down on us like a garbage truck.

He whipped the light back.

The Wall of water came at us head-on, a mountain in the puny beam of light. We stumbled back, falling over rocks we couldn't see. Going down, struggling to stand. Louie heaved Casey up onto his shoulders and staggered inland. He tried to hang on to the flashlight, but it was lost in the ocean rushing around our waists. The light glowed underwater and went out as it sank.

The ocean knocked me off my feet. I flailed inland, my glasses tight in my fist. I would never let them go, no matter what. I gasped a last breath… and went under. (pp. 113-14)

By the same author: Under the Blood-Red Sun.

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All in this together

Hi all,

Just getting back from Poughkeepsie, NY, where I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of school and public library administrators, a group of teachers and librarians, and a group of parents, all in the same day. It gave me a chance to really highlight an important point: promoting reading to boys is something that takes a whole community effort. Too often, especially with our current focus on testing and school accountability, we point our fingers at low test scores among boys and say, "Hey, the schools are failing!" While schools in this country need to make some serious adjustments to address reading in a way that recognizes gender differences, this accusation is unfair, and unsupported by the research. Worst of all, making the accusation takes our focus away from the real problems and the real solutions.

Boys' reading scores will tend to lag behind girls' because of delays in brain development. Boys brains just tend to develop slower than girls' brains, from a year behind on average when they are three years old to three years by the early teens. That lag dissappears eventually, but that difference accounts for a great deal of the frustration and angst about boys and reading. What we need to be doing while the brain lag exists is surrounding boys with interesting reading at low reading levels, encouraging them to read in bulk as the only proven way to develop the both the skill and the love of reading. That is best done by immersing boys in a culture of literacy, where everyone from teachers and other school personnel, parents, business people, politicians, sports stars, and sanitation workers all read, and do so visably and energetically. Schools really need to change to this approach, but even if they do, the effect will be lost if the whole community does not follow suit.

And of course, it must be pointed out that schools find it hard to focus on reading as a life-long obsession when they are being pressed to show short-term gains as measured by a meaningless standard. Heavy-handed "accountability" programs start with an assumption that reading "at grade level" is a serious goal. There is no meaningful standard for reading achievement based on grade level or age. Kids experience different levels of brain development based on a thousand factors, the most significant of which is gender. Unfortunately, the desire to set standards for schools pushes us to adopt such benchmarks, without adequate consideration of the effects. Instead of teaching kids to love reading, we convince them that reading is a task done to achieve a specific and immediate end. We take from our teachers the freedom to address different kids at different developmental levels with different learning styles.

The desire for accountability, based on a desperate desire to identify and eliminate bad teachers and bad schools, has caused us to handcuff our good teachers, who most will admit greatly outnumber the bad ones. If we want to address the difficulty that boys have when it comes to reading, we must, first, convince teachers that gender differences matter, second, give them the freedom to address these issues in their own classrooms, and third, support their efforts throughout the community. By sponsoring workshops for administrators, librarians, teachers, and parents, all on the topic of "Connecting Boys With Books", the schools and public libraries of Poughkeepsie, NY have taken a big step towards accomplishing all three of these goals. I would like to thank them, and appload them, for this approach.

Links to the program organizers:

Dutchess County BOCES

Mid-Hudson Library System

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"No Girls Allowed" in Wyoming

Not the whole state! Give me a break. No, there are "No Girls Allowed" in a special couple of programs at the Natrona County Public Library this summer. (http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2007/08/01/news/casper/8aed87807464538a8725732a000087c3.txt) The programs are designed to get men into the library interacting with their sons, and to leave a little room to celebrate some very guy-friendly activities. There are games and dinosaurs and guy books full of words like "underpants" and "poop".

I've been involved in a few such programs over the years and they tend to be impactful; just a special time for a special point of view. Nobody wants to disciminate or minimize the importance of girls, but just to have some time for boys to be boys.

Reading is too often seen as an activity for girls. WRONG!!!! And this is a program designed to prove it.

At the same time, we have to make sure girls are encouraged to be involved in worthwhile activities often seen as being just for boys. Case in point, just last week the Susan Polgar National Invitational for Girls Chess Championship (http://www.susanpolgar.com/susan-polgar-foundation-invitational.html)  was held in New Jersey, and one of my students represented New Hampshire. Avary learned how to play the game of chess less than a year before she became the NH State Girls Champion.

Avary and some of the guys from Tales Told Tall Chess (she's the one with a pony tail, I'm the one with a beard.)

I've taught "girls only" chess programs, and people said it was a great way to level the playing field. I hope people look at an occaisional "boys only" reading program the same way.

The next logical question? What about single-gender classrooms in schools? I'll write about that later, but if you want a real discussion starter, look at this article from NEA Today:

http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0604/singlesex.html

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Flying Origami!

Doing a little origami as we spent six hours on what should have been a 2 hour Delta Airlines flight. It's nice to get a few smiles when people are tearing their hair out. Maybe Delta should hire entertainers if they are going to treat people like this?

11:23 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

If you liked "City of Ember" by Duprau...

If you liked "City of Ember" by Jeanne Duprau, and lets face it, who didn't?, I have found the next great book for you. It's called "First Light" by Rebecca Stead, a first novel of the earthly other-world sub genre of fantasy. That means little or no magic, except possibly lost knowledge of the natural world. The beauty here is that the author has to look at real people in an unreal setting, and it was the resonance of the haracters in The City of Ember that so many people loved. Also, if people object to fantasy on the religious porinciple that magic and magical creatures are against their sensibilities, here is a book that has none of that, just a big what if? What if people chose to take a different path.

Alright, I'm off on a tangent, but this is a fresh new writer with a great story.

I'm writing this late at night from the Atlanta airport after a day's run around by the, ahem, good folks at Delta Airlines. I watched a Delta "customer service" representative threaten to send a crying woman to jail for accepting a hotel voucher from another passanger. Terrible customer service, and I think volume is the best impetus towards good service, so thought you all should know. If you are thinking of flying Delta, well don't. If you are flying Delta soon, say hi for me! And feel free to let us know what other heartless corporate hacks refuse to treat you as a human being. Maybe we can pass on some horror stories to the powers that be.

Well, just 11 hours before my next flight (with no hotel voucher myself since the five hour delay of my flight coming in was "not our fault".) So off to read the next book in my bag.

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Keeping a booklist the modern way

Keeping a list of the books you have read and the books you want to read has always been a great idea, for both kids and adults. As a librarian, I remember people all the time staring at books with a puzzled look and saying, "Have I read that yet?" Or holding a book they just read in their hands and saying, "What comes after this?"

I've tried to keep booklists myself over the years but could never keep them up. A friend of mine turned me on to "Good reads", a website that lets you keep your lists in order and share them with others. It's been great catching up with old friends an seeing what they are reading, and getting their reviews. Of course now I have an even bigger stack of books to get through, but I won't be caught with nothing to read!

Check it out for yourself, or create a GoodReads account for the whole family. One thing I always tell people is that you will read more if you read in concert with others. Make it a social thing.

Oh, and when you do sign up, add me as your friend so I can see what you are reading! Just sign up for a profile, click on "Add Friends", and put in my email: mike@talestoldtall.com.

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Three Picture Books for Boys

I am always asked about great picture books for guys, and I don't get around to suggesting them often enough. Face it, we all like to pick up a picture book now and then. If you have a boy that is "too old" for picture books, remember that what makes good readers is time spent with text. If that time is fun and easy, boys will read more and improve as readers. Also, if you have a boy who is struggling to read, picture books (and comic books, joke books, and the like) will relieve the tension around reading. Here are three that can't miss:

The Rules, by Marty Kelley.

Marty Kelley is, well, he's goofy. And the illustrations and stilted rhymes in this book are so goofy your boy will fall off your lap, and you will fall off your chair.

The Real Story of Stone Soup, by Ying Chang Compestine, illustrated by Stephanie Florisch.

Stone Soup is to storytelling what "Misty" is to Jazz, most tellers have their own version, and you better bring something new to the table if you want to be remembered. (You can see my version in my book "Connecting Boys With Books" from ALA Editions)

Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs!, by Kathleen V. Kudlinski, illustrated by S.D. Schindler.

Boys tend to like nonfiction more than most of us adults can imagine, and few topics resonate with boys like dinosaurs. Here is a book filled with facts that kids can proudly repeat to their friends to show how much they know about real dinosaurs. The illustrations are full of funny pictures of the bad ideas we have had about dinosaurs over the years. 

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Comic Books Still Rule

Do you know how many men who read remember reading comic books as kids? I ask men all the time what turned them on to reading and comic books is among the most common answers, right there with newspapers and fantasy. Nowadays with Manga and graphic novels, the comic book form has renewed power.

Sue Stauffacher, author of award winning books such as "Donutheart" and "Harry Sue" has a new comic book series out based on inner city life, but in the classic comic book tradition of the dark hero with the hidden past. Check it out, it's called "Wireman" and the first four issues are on sale for the first time ever. Want a bonus? You can download your own copies in PDF form for free and color them in yourself. If you are a boy who wants to go into comics writing, or you know a boy like that, this is an opportunity not to be missed. You can order copies or download copies at http://www.suestauffacher.com. And drop Sue a note on her web page saying you heard about Wireman here.

My booktalk for Wireman:
Who needs adventure when just getting to, through, and from school is a life and death struggle? Andre is prey in the urban jungle, until a huge and reclusive stranger puts his mark on him. Hero or phantom? Comic book character or real life hero? In a world this dark, who can tell the difference?

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