After taking a look at our selection of hot new releases and popular kids’ books … it’s more than likely we’re suckers for picture books about love, kindness, and compassion.
Browsing: David Teague
If you took everything that was coolest about James Bond, got rid of the foolishness about girls and martinis that fifth grade boys have no patience for anyway, and then, in a stroke of genius, got rid of James Bond, too, leaving just the villains, back when they were about thirteen, when they were just getting started, then you’d have “H.I.V.E. The Higher Institute of Villainous Education.”
School has started. Great news for some kids (a rare and exotic variety), bad news for some (more common), and mixed news for most. This post isn’t about a book or a series of books. It’s about making a place to be, well, Somebody: Alex Rider, Otto Malpense, Jack Gantos, Jasper Dash, you name it.
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.
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.
Why are Dads finagling and only possibly reading books with their boys, while moms are emphatically recommending and thereby making their sons suspicious?
Sometimes, as I ponder tactics for encouraging the “reluctant readers” in my life (typically late-elementary through middle-school boys), I cast my mind back to an earlier generation’s paragon of averseness, Mikey [Life cereal commercial]. Only instead of confronting Mikey with healthy breakfast cereal, in my imagination, I confront him with fiction.
“Franklin’s Big Dreams,” is David Teague’s first picture book, based on dreams he had when he was little but didn’t quite figure out until he wrote “Franklin.”