CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

• A great article on reading from the Washington Post, brought to our attention through the OZTLNet listerv (thanks Dianne in Hong Kong)
• Boys’ reading: an initiative from Charlie Higson, creator of the Young Bond series:

Charlie Higson, author of the popular Young Bond series, has launched a computer game set in the world of 007 to help address declining literacy standards in young boys. The initiative comes only a matter of days after time spent at the computer was blamed for a fall in Sats results for English, with one in five 14-year-old boys found to be reading below the level expected for an 11-year-old.

There’s that SATS words again!

• The Queensland Writers’ Centre has sprung to the defence of Requiem: Detractors ask if we really want to read profanity and racist dialogue in our children’s books? But this is an insidious question. What can the reasonable answer be except ‘no’? … But this of course masks the real issue. That ugliness exists. That racism, violence and ignorance are real. And books, especially fiction, are still the best vehicles for exploring confronting ideas.

There’s a great post today on Guys Lit Wire, a blog about books for boys. Do teenage boys need books with weak female characters? links to a YouTube discussion where two older males bemoan that boys can’t be heroes any more. In praising a new title, Nick of Time by Ted Bell, the speakers make a point of saying how great it is that the female characters are passive so that the boys can rescue them.

This discussion is rebutted confidently by ‘Colleen’:

‘There are a couple of things that bother me about this discussion (between two adult men without a teenager in sight by the way). First it is that for a boy to feel heroic he must rescue a girl – and the girl also needs to be rescued. I’m sure the sociologists would have a field day over all this but I can’t believe that anyone in the 21st century would believe that such antiquated notions of what it means to be a hero have any place in a worthwhile discussion. Save the world – yes! Save the animals, save the environment, save whatever needs saving in your books. But the girl MUST be saved by the boy for the boy to feel powerful? How do these gentlemen think it makes the girl feel to have to wait to be saved? Have they ever thought about that at all?’

Colleen also provides a ‘top of the head’ list of titles where boys are both strong and heroic.

It’s a terrific discussion for a boys’ lit blog, with plenty of comments coming in.

Boys and books have been on the reading agenda for a while now. James Roy is one who has been an articulate advocate of the cause. Here are some blogs dedicated to boys and books, well worth you and the boys in your school keeping an eye on:

• Boys, Blokes, Books, from the Centre for Youth Literature, State Library of Victoria
• Guys Lit Wire, a new YA blog from the US
• Boys Blogging Books, a blog for boys by boys
• Books and Boys, another US site

And then there’s Guys Read, the site of US Ambassador for Children’s Literature, Jon Scieszka.

If you are aware of any others, let us know.