Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Where are the BOYS?

Help! Question of the day: where are the boy book bloggers? Sure, we have our friends at SMS Guys Read, Boys Read! Boys Rule!, Guys Lit Wire, the Mr. K. Reads, Mike Sullivan's lists at Boy Meets Book, and Max Elliot Anderson's Books for Boys. There are lots of blogs and sites put up by male writers, but where are the blogs by fathers, teen boys, and male librarians? There are a ton of blogs by teenaged girls, but no boy book bloggers that I can find.

Has anyone found any?

Here's what I would like to do: I'd like to separate my Book Reviews and Blogs list so that there is a separate list for sites that highlight a good quantity of books for middle school boys. Funny, scary, adventure, mystery-- any kind of books that middle school boys would pick up and enjoy. The blogger doesn't have to be male (newsflash: I'm not!), but has to be especially concerned with finding books for middle school boys. It helps if reviews for books of interest to boys are posted fairly frequently.

Let me know, and we'll get a list going. If we want boys to read, we need to make it easy for them to find books, and also for their (often female) librarians and teachers to find them books.

Please help me out!

8 comments:

  1. If I get a middle school job, I'll be your guy. I don't have a good answer for you. 100 Scope notes is a middle school blogger, but not a heavy reviewer. Ready when you are, C.B. is a middle school teacher and probably my favorite reviewer but only some of those are YA. I'll ask him, though, if he knows more...

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  2. You should check out The OWL blog, she does a Friday for the Guys feature on MG and YA books that appeal to boys.

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  3. Other than the ones you mentioned, there's this one (but they haven't updated in a while):

    http://boysbloggingbooks.blogspot.com

    This one is by a teacher whose focus is comics and graphic novels (not necessarily for boys only, but since boys tend to like comics a little more...)

    http://graphicclassroom.blogspot.com/

    This one's by four authors who tend to focus on boys, including former Ambassador Scieszka:

    http://guyswithbooks.blogspot.com/

    I'm anxious to find out more...

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  4. Hey Ms. Y,

    You have me stumped. I looked over my pageflake list of all the guy blogs I follow, and you already hit them all. I do check out the Guys Read page from time to time and Jon Scieszka Worldwide, but all the other blogs I follow are run by girls.

    You are so right that this is a field that is heavy with a female voice and very often lacking a male perspective.

    Right now I am a teacher, but I go around and around about going back and getting a masters in Library Science, I think I would enjoy it.

    Mr. H - SMS Guys Read

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  5. My nine year old has a blog, pickledbanans@blogspot.com, which I encouraged him to start with an eye toward the mg boy market, but it has fallen sadly by the wayside...perhaps I will do so more encouraging.

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  6. I can't wait to see the list you come up with and I wish I could help.

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  7. There's Robbie, Boywithbooks.com, but he has more of a high school focus.

    The Goddess of YA Literature (http://professornana.livejournal.com/) is a fabulous resource, both middle grade and high school, male and female.

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  8. Hey, Ms. Yingling, sorry I'm so late but it's busy here. You've already listed most of the MG boy blogs I know about. This one is about starting book clubs for boys:

    http://bookclub4boysinfo.blogspot.com/2008/12/start-book-club-for-your-boy.html

    and, of course, Jon Scieszka's site:

    http://www.guysread.com/

    which is a website rather than a blog.

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