guysread.com

Since most of my readers are guys, or are raising guys, I thought this would be of interest.

We got Ben a really cool book for Christmas - Guys Write for Guys Read. It's an anthology of essays and things written for a web site called guysread.com.

Guysread.com is devoted to literacy for boys. It offers great suggestions for books for boys of all ages - from just being read to, to completely grown up and still reading. It focuses on titles that boys would like - titles like The Day My Butt Went Psycho and The Stupids. The man who founded the web site, Jon Scieskza, is an elementary school teacher, children's book author, and just happened to grow up with five brothers. He knows a thing or two about boys and reading. He created the web site out of a concern for boys' dwindling excitement about reading as they get older, and from the theory that boys would read more, if they had more "boy stuff" to read.

The anthology was created in support of the web site - guy writers and illustrators of all kinds contributed their thoughts about reading and writing - for guys. David Shannon shares the origin of No, David! (he wrote it when he was five). Avi tells of a comic book drive that he organized when he was a kid to get reading materials to patients in a veterans hospital (he couldn't stop reading the comic books himself long enough to send them to anyone). Richard Peck, Rick Reilly, Stephen King - they're all in here. Ben is really enjoying it (he told me the Avi story on the way home from school today.)

So check it out. There's a lot of good information out there.