Male Librarians

[Christopher Harris]

It is great to see so many male librarians showing up on here! As I go in to my final week in an elementary placement, one of the challenges I have been working on is getting upper elementary (3-6) boys reading.

I pulled together a set of "dangerous" books that focused on bad-boy heroes like the Artemis Fowl series, Joey Pigza, many of Spinelli's books, Captain Underpants, and the like. I also grabbed all of the graphic novels (Bone and a couple of Marvel books) that the library had. Even with some rousing book talks, personal recommendations, and cajoling, I was often quite unsuccessful in getting boys to check the books out. Still, I had a few successes that made it all worthwhile.

What have you found to work in connecting to boy readers as a male librarian (or as a female librarian)?

[Lesley Edwards]

I started a boy's focus group and had them make recommendations for what they would like to see in the library. As a result I now have a shelf of "boy titles" right beside the library entrance with all covers facing out, included both fiction and non-fiction in the display, ordered in some additional magazines like Slam and Chart (I'm in a secondary school). We invited male guest readers to our meetings and always served food. They told me that they don't like labels on books like "Guys Read", they just want the books to be there where they can spot them quickly.

[Sandy Kelly]

Chris, I had a middle school book discussion group a few years ago, after school, when my schedule could accommodate it. Surprisingly, I had many more boys than girls. They orchestrated some fun ideas like developing a scavenger hunt in the library based on one of the books they read. I couldn't have done a better job myself. Maybe you'd like to try a group based on titles that appeal mainly to boys and see who signs up. My suggestion would be Gary Paulsen. For our first meeting I actually invited anyone who had read a Paulsen book to come share it with the group. I had 8 boys and 2 girls. Then we set up a reading list based on their own recomendations right from the start. It turned out very well... oh..and yes...the word got out that there was food! :-)
Sandy

[guybrarian]

Christopher, we males were holding our own on the NING...but now the ratio is much like real life!

At school my boys love the Poetry Slam/lunchtime Combo. I have a set of them in my Book Buddies, and 1/2 of my library aides are male...does that count?

[Bob Hassett]

I guess it depends on the boy. You've got to talk to them and see what they're into. But I always make a guarantee to every kid (I tell them it's guaranteed or their money back -- once a kid interjected, in all seriousness, "Wait a minute, we have to pay for this?!") that there are several books in this library that will blow their minds and change their attitudes about reading, whatever they happen to be now. Our job is figure out which books those are. I make them promise me they'll bring the book back and tell me if they don't like it and we'll find something else. Sometimes they do, sometimes not.

The Cirque du Freak series is usually an easy sell -- we're a MS and boys that age respond to horror and gore. Those books also speak to a worldview shared by nearly all early teens: I am different and nobody really understands how hard it is to be me. I've gotten a bunch of books about cars and motorcycles and soccer -- I find boys tend generally to prefer nonfiction, though by no means exclusively. The Bluford series is a good mover, too. The books are short. And a lot of kids think of themselves as bad, partly as a defense, I think, against all the social demands they find coming at them, to give them a little space to grow up in. The fact that Bluford deals with "the streets" draws kids in. For the same reason, short, simply written biographies of hip-hop stars are popular. We have three copies of a pretty decent Bob Marley bio that is almost never on the shelf for more than a day. It's always boys checking those out. It seems that Central and South American kids identify with him especially, seeing him as somebody from their part of the world, even though ethnically different, who made it big in the larger world. The Dave Pelzer books, though more popular with girls, sometimes will grab them. That sense that I'm separate from the world and I've got it really tough resonates with kids, even ones who have no first-hand experience with child abuse. Gary Paulsen sometimes, but most of our kids are from an urban/suburban environment and for them the outdoors is the soccer field behind the school. Not much traction there. Still, for the right kid, the writing is powerful enough to draw him through. Mythology seems to be popular right now with some boys. The Mary Pope Osborne tales from the Odyssey are short enough that you can usually convince a kid at least to take one with him and give it a try. And then if you want to shoehorn them up to something at a higher reading level, there are the Lightning Thief and Sea of Monsters, which for some reason have become popular here among immigrant kids who have no background in Western mythology, but no doubt see parallels to their own traditions.

[Corey]

Hello..this message is for all you teachers. This recently sparked my interest as I am currently writing a report on Gendered Bodies. I was wondering why you all unofficially presume that boy's require different reading materials than girls. I feel as if grade schools and middle schools have a "hidden curriculum" to program boys and girls in a certain way. This programming of individuals was experienced in my grade school years, when teachers recommended books like Goosebumps to the gentlemen and something like Judy B. Jones to the ladies. Shouldn't children have the opportunity to choose the book they enjoy reading? I know the traditional way says boys need to be all the things that characterize a male (the whole macho,participate in only male based activities). I am not saying teachers are being biased, all I want to know know or understand is why teachers tend to treat boys and girls differently when it comes to gendering bodies. Isn't America based on equality and freedom of choice not forced reading?