The idea came from a simple comment, and like many good ones
evolved through a conversation with the right person. Isn’t it funny how that always seems to
happen?
My daughter had been invited to a mother-daughter book club.
It was organized by a great family and included a few moms who were teachers,
and some daughters that loved to read.
The organizing family researched children’s book clubs, chose a few
members—big ones tend to fall apart—and they started reading books and taking
turns hosting the meetings.
I took my comment to the Teacher-Librarian at the high
school that I was at, at the time, and somehow this great idea drifted over to
boys and dads and “wouldn’t it be great to have a boys’ book club”. I mean, my daughter and her friends are avid
readers, and so are many of the girls that we see in schools. But, we were having a harder time thinking of
young boys that we knew who were avid readers.
And we started to think about how many of us had dads who were avid
readers. Sure, I saw my dad read the
newspaper after work, but who even reads a newspaper anymore? Most of the dads of my generation read
everything that they needed to know at work or online (a.k.a. out of the eyes of these children).
Maybe this was a key to help us engage young male readers?
So, I did some research, and not surprisingly the general stereotype
was that boys had a harder time learning to than girls. At school, our own data supported that. In fact, of 12 7-years-olds who were at risk
for reading on our early literacy screener last year, 11 were boys. So, I started talking to people much smarter
than me, and asking them how we could engage these young male readers and all
the answers I found led me back to the original book club for boys, with their
adult, male role models as the lead readers.
This week, 11 boys brought their dads and grandpas to the
school one evening and we met in the Library for our first stab at the All
Boys Book Club. We did it this week as a
follow up to Fathers’ Day, and we called it the All Boys because not all of our
boys have dads and we wanted them to feel included and able to come with
grandpas, uncles, big brothers and next-door neighbours. I selected a great book that my own boys love
me reading to them: The Toughest Cowboy, or How The Wild West Was Tamed, by John Frank
with illustrations by Zachary Pullen. It
is a great book for boys with a great message and wonderful illustrations. It is fun and appeals to their sense of
humour, and has some wonderful word choices, and characters that really keep
things interesting until the end. It
also has a wonderful twist.
We started the event by giving each boy a copy of the book
to keep. Then, they had a look at the
cover and noticed that there were some interesting things there. First, the title word “Toughest” was done in
a fancy pink ribbon, and our main character, Grizz Brickbottom “the toughest
cowboy ever to drive a herd of cattle across the open range”, was holding a
ribbon and a hairbrush. Wait, a
hairbrush? We had the boys make some
predictions about what this story was going to be about...
Next, we had the boys take their dads on a picture walk
through the pages of the book, noticing the pictures and making more
predictions about what was going to happen.
Each pair was given some post-it notes to write down any new words that
they found, and once done, we worked together on some strategies to help us
figure out what these words might mean.
Some, like bedroll could be broken down into smaller words that we
know and the meaning just popped out for the boys. Tobasco was a common word selected
because ol’ Grizz “drank a quart of Tobasco sauce a day” and most dads were
able to describe the “hot sauce that we have in the fridge” to their guys. Other words, like ornery, were just hard
words and required the boys to ask an adult what it meant, which is a great
strategy in itself. Finally, the dads
were put on the spot and asked to read the story aloud to their boys--in their best cowboy twang. For our youngest, emerging readers the dads
read and the more advanced readers read to their dads. The ones that were in the middle took turns
with their dads, alternating who read each page. This was a great strategy, because it allowed
the boys to try reading the book, and also allowed for them to hear the written word spoken with cadence
and some fluidity. Instead of spending
all of their energy trying to decode the words, they got regular breaks so that
they could just listen to the story. And
let’s be honest, we all love to listen to stories!
The story finishes with an idiom, so we sent the boys home
with a sheet of common idioms and an activity where they take turns drawing the
idioms out and having their partner try to guess what the idiom was. Special thanks to my LAT teacher for creating
this for us to use.
All in all, it was a great event, and one that we will
repeat in the fall with a new book. We
are also going to start a book club for girls, led by our learning assistance
teacher, and then create an event where we blend the genders. Still, I am glad that we celebrated boys and reading,
and it was a very nice following up to Fathers’ Day.
