How To Connect Boys with Books

Not all boys like books (at first, anyway). So, how to get a boy hooked on reading? One way: find out what he likes, give him a book on that, and then introduce him to similar books. Plenty of time later to push for higher reading levels or character-driven books we call “literature.” Boys tend to like action or topics they find exotic (say, trucks or snakes), and there are plenty of such plot-driven and nonfiction books in the Niles Public Library’s Youth Services Department.

Let’s start with a book for the very youngest… What boy could resist a zoo animal’s making a dash for freedom? This classic plotline (Curious George did it, for example) gets a new twist in Stephen Savage’s Where’s Walrus? Savage uses no words, only pictures, in this zany story of a walrus on the run. Boys as young as 16 months have been known to love this book.

Fast forward a few years. If (like his dad) he loves Calvin and Hobbes (full of dinosaurs, crashing spaceships and water balloons), he’ll love Stephen McCranie’s graphic novel The Biggest, Bestest Time Ever. Fourth-grade genius Mal and his talking dog Chad shrink to microscopic size and time-travel. What’s not to like?

Today’s emphasis on series books helps hook boys: if they love certain adventure/fantasy books, there are likely others in the series or soon will be. Cases in point: Squish and Ranger’s Apprentice.

Jennifer and Matthew Holm's Squish, Super Amoeba has the makings of a Grade 2-4 classic and sequels are coming. Squish’s microscopic world mirrors our own, complete with moral dilemmas (the school bully wants to cheat off Squish’s test paper). Boys like real-world problems handled by, uh, bizarre or unusual characters, just as they like stories about other boys having grand adventures.

Enter Ranger’s Apprentice, John Flanagan’s middle school (Grades 5-8) favorite. No wonder: mysterious cloaked figures (Rangers) guard a Medieval realm, occasionally allying with sword-wielding Vikings... Hand the boy a copy of The Emperor of Nihon-Ja -- a young Samurai-type warrior protects his emperor from rebellion with help from Rangers – and he will likely read the other nine books in the series.

Let’s not forget nonfiction… For the youngest readers, great illustrations meet thought-provoking text in Martin Jenkins’s Can We Save the Tiger? (It’s not just about tigers, but over two dozen species.) Coral Reefs, the latest book from Jason Chin, morphs the NYC Public Library into a coral reef! (Sounds crazy, but the author made just such an offbeat juxtaposition work in his influential book Redwoods.) The premise may be fictitious, but the shown-in-detail coral reef is true to life (modeled on one in Belize, Central America).

For the older reader, try Sally Walker’s Blizzard of Glass. Best known for Secrets of a Civil War Submarine, she now recounts the collision of two munitions-loaded ships in Halifax (Canada) harbor during World War I. True to her formula of “history, mystery and science,” Walker explains how that caused a tsunami and took 2,000 lives. Sad though that fact is, the book is riveting and features stunning photographs.

Whatever will get a boy reading, the Niles Public Library’s Youth Services Department has it. Drop by and ask any librarian to help you connect with great “boy books.”