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He won’t read it.  He hates everything. #3

By David Teague, The Children’s Book Review
Published: August 20, 2012

Of course, every boy isn’t a reluctant reader.  A lot of boys love books.  All we’re trying to do is get as many as possible to strike their pup-tents in camp #1 and pitch them in Camp #2.

To quote the great Jon Scieszka (which is something I do quite frequently and with stellar results):

“Boys aren’t believing that ‘Reading is wonderful.’ Reading is often difficult and boring for them. Let’s start with “Here is one book . . . you might like”

Not to name names, but a certain boy I know, who needs to clean up his room right now, used to be a bona fide reluctant reader when he was in first grade.  These days, I have to order his light off at 10:30 so he can get some sleep, and usually I find him lying in bed reading BEFORE it’s time to get up on Saturdays.

What happened?  Like the great Mr. Scieszka said, one book:

Sideways Stories from Wayside School

What’s so special about Sideways Stories from Wayside School?

Ask any boy who has read it, and he’ll tell you:

1. It’s hilarious.
2. It has short, easy chapters.

Which means:

1. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s not intimidating.

Ask me, and I’ll tell you those three things, plus one more:

1. It’s really sophisticated.

Sure, the scenarios are wacky.  As you probably know, Wayside School was supposed to be thirty classrooms wide and one story high, but by mistake got built thirty stories high and one classroom wide.  Among its many students are Bebe Gunn, Eric Bacon, Eric Fry, and Eric Ovens.  In the first chapter, Mrs. Gorf, a colossally mean teacher, turns all her pupils into apples when they make her mad, until Jenny holds up a mirror in front of Mrs. Gorf and turns her into an apple, whereupon Louis the Yard Teacher eats her.

Louis, by the way, is based on the author himself, who used to be a playground monitor.  Louis is nice to all the children and has a multicolored mustache.  When Mrs. Drazil makes him shave, he becomes very by-the-book and makes the kids call him Mr. Louis.  When the mustache grows back, he reverts to his much cooler self.

There are at least fifty characters in this book, all drawn very clearly in terms young readers can grasp quickly, and Sachar does not dumb down his humor.  The intricate web of relationships he creates among characters and the comic conflicts he engineers between them would make Charles Dickens proud.

Sideways Stories from Wayside School proved to be a gateway book for my reluctant reader.  He loved the jokes and adored the characters and read it again and again until he started to see far deeper into the complexity of fiction than he’d ever seen—than he’d ever imagined.  He inhabited that book, he owned that book, he memorized that book, and it gave him the enthusiasm and

He won’t read it.  He hates everything. #3

By David Teague, The Children’s Book Review
Published: July 7, 2012

On the first day of summer vacation when I was twelve years old, I got on my bicycle, rode three miles down the street through a tunnel of new leaves, emerged into lemon-colored sunshine in the middle of town, racked my bike, opened the front door of the library to release its peppery aroma into the juicy green afternoon, and saw a book with a fantastic cover awaiting me on the nearest wooden table: M.C. Higgins The Great.

On the first page, Mayo Cornelius, sporting lettuce affixed to his wrists with rubber bands (for reasons that became clear later) stared into the distance, imagining the freedom that lay in his future, wondering what to do with it. Just like me: In the deafening summertime silence made up of nobody telling me what to do, and with a bicycle I could theoretically ride until I fell into the Pacific Ocean, I’d spent the entire day thinking, “Now I’m gonna make something happen. But what?”

So I started reading to see what M. C. had done with all his freedom. On a hot, leafy mountainside overlooking the Ohio River, he set out to explore what it meant—the freedom to stand up to his father, the freedom to forge friendships with people very different from himself, the freedom to imagine a future no one else in his family had ever imagined, and the freedom to pursue it. His life was more dramatic than mine, more dangerous, odd, fraught, and strange, because he was a character in a novel, but M. C. himself, I understood. He was on a quest to find out who M. C. really was.

And so M. C. Higgins The Great made the summer of 1975 last forever. His story was the story of how he became himself amid trees and streams and the first hints freedom that come with growing up.

Which makes it a perfect summer book.

Here are a few more like it:

The Postcard

By Tony Abbott

Jason travels to St. Petersburg, Florida, and goes on a quest to uncover secrets that will change everything he ever believed about himself and his family.

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers | April 2, 2008 | Ages 8-12

Hatchet

By Gary Paulsen

Brian survives a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness and comes of age facing the challenge of survival in a thrilling, dangerous land.