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I actually have a book coming out today! Or a story at least.

Long time squeetusers know I cringe a bit whenever someone designates a book as "for girls" or "for boys." I've talked about this issue here, and here, and here, among other places. In essence, what I oppose is how we all (parents, readers, teachers, librarians, booksellers, kids, friends) have a tendency to recommend any book of interest to a girl reader, but to a boy we tend to only recommend books by guys about guys. We're raising boys to not be interested in female protagonists. Suggesting that learning about, understanding, and having empathy for girls is beneath them. I could go on about this for HOURS but I'll resist.

Now, are you familiar with Guys Read? I first heard Jon Scieszka--former educator, current writer, and eternal guy--speak about this in 2005 when I'd just released Princess Academy. He'd noticed that the majority of people telling kids to read are women. (i'm paraphrasing, and hopefully correctly) Teachers and librarians tend to be women, and mothers tend to be readers more than fathers. So we say "reading is important! you should read!" but if only women are saying this, boys get the message that reading is really only for girls. He started a movement to get more guys visibly talking about reading, as well as gathering wonderful lists of books that guys might enjoy.

When I was writing those blog posts about girls and boys reading all kinds of books, I made a clarification: "I love the Guys Read campaign. With the majority of educators being women, we need more visible male reading role models." I didn't want anyone to take my comments as a condemnation of that wonderful program.

Funny enough, Jon contacted me that same day, without even seeing that note about Guys Read I'd just posted, to ask me to contribute a short story to their next anthology. And it published in the US today! This anthology focuses on science fiction and fantasy short stories, featuring such authors as Rebecca Stead, Neal Shusterman, Rick Riordan, Tom Angleberger, and Ray Bradbury. And myself. You can purchase it at your local bookstore. You can also buy the entire hardcover or paperback online or download just my story, "Bouncing the Grinning Goat," anywhere ebooks are sold. I'm reading it with my 9 year old now and the stories are just great. Here's to guys reading!

Previously I've posted some images from the forthcoming anthology GUYS READ: Funny Business. I have a story in it, and illustrated the thing. But more importantly, other people have stories in it. Other people like Mac Barnett, Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo, Paul Feig, Jack Gantos, Jeff Kinney, Jon Scieszka, and David Yoo. And David Lubar. You know David. Author of Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie and In the Land of the Lawn Weenies?

Here's the illustration I made for David's story, "Kid Appeal." I defy you to figure out what's going on in this story from the image. You'll just have to get the book, which is in stores now.

Previously I've posted some images from the forthcoming anthology GUYS READ: Funny Business. I have a story in it, and illustrated the thing. But more importantly, other people have stories in it. Other people like Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo, Paul Feig, Jack Gantos, Jeff Kinney, David Lubar, Jon Scieszka, and David Yoo. And Mac Barnett. You know Mac. Practically every image I've posted for the last two years has been for a Mac Barnett book.

Here's the illustration I made for Mac's story, "Best of Friends."

Previously I've posted the cover and a whole lot of cover sketches for the forthcoming anthology GUYS READ: Funny Business. I have a story in it, and illustrated the thing. But more importantly, other people have stories in it. Other people like Mac Barnett, Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo, Jack Gantos, Jeff Kinney, David Lubar, and David Yoo. And Paul Feig. You know, the Paul Feig who created the best television show of the nineties, Freaks and Geeks.

Here's the illustration I made for Paul's story, "My Parents Give My Bedroom to a Biker."

Pardon my language. The cover for this book, the first of a forthcoming GUYS READ Library, was a little slippery. Hard to nail down. Previously I showed you the cover we ended up with, today I show most of the ones we didn't.

Early in the process I was really attached to the idea that all of the GUYS READ anthologies might have the common element of an illicit black bar or box, possibly containing the GR logo, which could always be concealing an ostensibly naughty or terrifying or mysterious part of the image. Jon Scieszka and the good people at HarperCollins humored me for a long time about this.

Click to make big.



Then we all glommed onto the pie in the face element for a while.



What I'm not showing you at this point is a number of formal-looking portraits of a Little Lord Fauntleroy type with pie face or, alternately, Groucho glasses. That's because eventually Harper or Jon or somebody thought it might be better to pull back from this portrait and show a modern-lloking boy admiring it in a museum setting.



Eventually it was agreed that the gallery was working but Fauntleroy wasn't, so we explored other options.



NOT SHOWN: about a half-dozen other concepts that were too superficially similar to these to bother including.

If I sound bitter or tired that's only because I enjoy complaining. I love this book and I like its cover.

In case you missed it when I posted this back in May, here's the...trailer? Sizzle? What are we calling these things now? Here's the moving talky thing for GUYS READ: Funny Business, which I mentioned yesterday.

I have a confession to make: I didn't get the joke. But I love this book trailer! I loved seeing some of my favorite authors in the flesh...er...video, as it were. And I bet young readers will to. Color me pre-ordering.

This Week is Words Matter Week
Check out the Words Matter Week blog, sponsored by the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors for interesting prompts and daily blog challenge questions.

There’s something about ‘Alice’
The Boston Globe features a great article on Lewis Carroll’s book and readers obsession with Alice’s story. In other “Alice” news, Tim Burton’s 3-D movie version opens today!

U.S. Plans New Measure for Poverty
This week the federal government announced it would begin producing an experimental measurement of poverty next year, a step toward the first overhaul of the formula since it was developed nearly a half-century ago.

Fairbanks man works to get boys to read more books
A great profile on Tim Stallard and the Alaska chapter of the Guys Read program, which seeks to encourage and improve boys’ reading levels.

Teaching kids to read from the back of a burro
For hundreds of children in the rural villages of Colombia, Luis Soriano is more than a man riding a stubborn donkey – he is a man with a mission to save rural children from illiteracy.

This week in YA:

Teen Read Week is over… But that doesn’t mean we stop reading YA, right? Right. Like you needed an excuse to read a good book.

Most links from this week relate back to last week’s bookfrenzie. For author interviews, go to Readergirlz and the YA Authors Cafe. Just be ready for your to-read pile to take on Jenga-esque proportions.

Publishers Weekly reports on teen reading habits, based on research done by Teenreads.com. Very interesting, so take a look for yourself, but here are some numbers that jumped out at me:

1. By 2013, sales to teens are expected to rise more than 30 percent
2. And this is a biggie: 61 PERCENT OF TEENS READ MYSTERY/SUSPENSE/THRILLER!!!

Let there be more books in this category! Exclamation mark! Books like this one, maybe? And more books to get boys excited about reading, because the survey shows that 96 percent of responders were female… And that just ain’t right.

Speaking of which, check out GUYS READ, a website all about books for guys (but I’m guessing you may have figured that already). I found this one at YPulse, where this article reviews the website. Apparently, GUYS READ is the brainchild of author Jon Scieszka; check out this great list of books great for guys of all ages.

Onward to the Great Stories CLUB, an ALA grant-sponsored book club for underprivileged teens. Applications for grants are being taken until November 2, so if you want in, hurry. Seems like a cool program.

Also at YALSA, find out which books 11,000 teens voted for this year’s top 10. I was glad to see John Green’s Paper Towns at the top, and added a few new titles to my list. So many books, so little time…

My very own Pikes Peak Library District has a list of 20 YA mysteries, in case you want more to read.

At Shelftalker, children’s bookseller Josie Leavitt makes her predictions on which books will get Newbery, Caldecott and Printz awards, and asks everyone to chime in. I’m staying out of this one, but will be interested to see if she’s right.

And finally, delightfully off-topic, check out Becky Clark’s collection of Halloween pet costumes. Happy Halloween, everyone!

P.S. Links come on Thursday now, since that works out better for me.

The latest installment in our Ypulse Youth Website Profile series is a review of the recently relaunched Guys Read site. What it is… YA author and National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Jon Scieszka's web-based literacy program for... Read the rest of this post

I liked James Preller’s blog entry yesterday about “boy books,” and the example he posts of an atypical (and oddly touching) “boy book” about friends growing apart.

“Boy books” is an interesting topic to me, and one I should blog more about, but I find myself confounded by the topic. What are “boy books”? I mean, I write them, so I must know something about them, but at the same time, I’m not completely comfortable with the idea that boys and girls are supposed to read different books. Moreover, the “boy book” genre seems to entail a lot of assumptions — that boys are reluctant readers who need to be constantly stimulated, that their books need to be action-packed, with plenty of monsters and/or booger jokes–or, for teen readers, hard-hitting sparsely written books with car crashes and fist fights.

At the same time, I do understand that boys don’t read as much as girls and we’re trying to give them what they want. More monsters, more booger jokes. It seems to work. And don’t get me wrong, I love monster stories and don’t mind the occasional booger joke or car crash. But we don’t just give boys the books we think they want, we tell them what they should want. We tell them who boys are. It’s like giving a girl a Barbie doll.

The current truism in “boy books” is that boys don’t care about feelings. They need violence and action. And the books we give them makes it so. At least until they grow up to enjoy Judd Apatow movies, which are all about masculine relationships and how awkward they are because guys aren’t brought up to think about feelings.

......like, 3 or 4 or more times--all three books, as well as the on-line comic--and you're looking for something in the same vein. Then let me suggest Knucklehead, Jon Scieszka's autobiography. In this rather slim volume (and one guesses that there was so much more he could have included,) divided into bite-sized chapters just right for reluctant readers, Jon writes of his experience growing up

Recent Children's Publishing News (just in case you haven't seen it)...

• Christy Ottaviano Books. Joining the likes of Richard Jackson, Wendy Lamb, Megan Tingley and others, Henry Holt's Christy Ottaviano has been promoted to editorial director of her own eponymous imprint, Christy Ottaviano Books, publishing "literary and commercial picture books and fiction for all ages. Books that encourage imagination and free-thinking, foster a sense of family and community, target the feelings of children, and speak directly to children’s interests as they explore various milestones. Books that are reassuring as well as those that challenge readers--intriguing books for inquisitive kids."

• Jon Scieszka's new post. Children's book author (and funniest author I've ever seen in person) Jon Scieszka has been named the U.S.'s first national ambassador for young people's literature by the librarian of Congress, James Billington. He'll act as "an evangelist for reading." This is a deserving post for Scieszka--check out his Guys Read site, a web-based literacy program to help boys find stuff they'd like to read.