Boy's Book Research Articles

The dangerous deconstruction of gender: narrative inquiry of masculinities in a popular children's book

The leisure pastime of children's reading transmits important cultural messages about gender and identity. The messages relayed through the guise of innocent characters, settings, and plots many times reinforce dominant discourses and expectations of cultural appropriateness. In order to highlight the ways that reading can become a mechanism for the dissemination of heteronormative notions of gender, we explored the popular children's book The dangerous book for boys. Using the methodology of narrative inquiry, we analyzed the text to illuminate the leisurely ‘tellings’ and ‘not tellings’ of meta-narratives related to the dominant discourse of masculinities. Data and results are presented using creative analytic practice in a quiz format that might be found in a young adult magazine. This quiz shows that only three typical archetypes, The Beav, Bond, and Boone, are presented as appropriate masculinities in the book. We concluded that ‘a book for all boys’ should be more representative of the multiple masculinities found within socio-cultural discourse.

“Aren't These Boy Books?”: High School Students' Readings of Gender in Graphic Novels

The author, a former library media specialist, often heard female students describe graphic novels as being “boy books” and sought to examine how a group of high school girls and boys read gender in three graphic novels. Through focus group and individual interviews, the participants indicated that they enjoyed reading graphic novels to varying extents, and they did not feel that graphic novels were geared only toward boys. Despite this conclusion, the students' responses revealed points of contention in terms of how they identified themselves as graphic novel readers and how they considered graphic novels to be forms of school knowledge.

Medelklassens buspojkar: en maskulinitetsstudie i Erik Pallins Pojkarna på Klasro

In my article, “Young rascals of the middle-class–masculinities in Erik Pallins Pojkarna pa Klasro ”, I argue that Pojkarna pa Klasro (1922) in many regards is a typical boy's book, and a good starting-point for mapping out and studying the Swedish branch of the genre, a genre defined by gender. During the 1920s the Swedish author Erik Pallin (1878–1964) wrote five books about the three brothers Erik, Nisse and Anders, which all take place at the family's summerhouse Klasro during school holidays. The stories mainly revolve around typical boyhood adventures and outdoor activities, such as hiking, exploring, swimming, rowing, and fighting other gangs of boys, in this case, preferably boys of the lower classes. Not surprisingly, Pallin's text describes a patriarchal hierarchy, where the boys are adjusted to hegemonic masculinity and driven by homosocial desire, which leads to the excluding of girls; most female characters play subordinated (anonymous) parts and are bound up with the domestic sphere. In terms of power, an intersectional perspective shows that besides gender, age, physical abilities, geographical domicile (in this case Stockholm) and class are important factors when the boys establish their pecking order. An interesting aspect of the fact that the boys belong to the middle-class, is the lack of typical boy's discourse (slang, puns, oaths etc.), which otherwise is common in Swedish boy's books of this era. Keywords: Swedish boy's book, masculinity, Erik Pallin, boyhood

Klart slut varulvstjut – den litterära pojkhumorn och exemplet Bert

“Literary boy homour and the books about Bert as an example”. In this article I outline the roots of boy humour in children’s literature. In Swedish tradition this category is intimately associated with the genre “tjuvpojksboken”(stories about young rascals). I argue that one important condition for the development of a humour of this kind, are the concept of the boy as a gentle savage, a central character in boyology. A discourse comprising descriptive and prescriptive writing on boyhood across a variety of genres. In Making American Boys (2004) Kenneth B. Kidd shows how the boyologists of the early twentieth century reworked themes and tropes they picked up from the American Boy Book (like Aldrich, Twain, and Tarkington); foremost the idea of the wildness of boys as a necessary step in becoming a man. Another important condition for boy humour is that the stories are told from the boy’s perspective, which in turn makes way for different boy’s discourses, such as “slanguage”. After examining the issue from a historical point-of-view, I turn to Anders Jacobsson’s and Sören Olsson’s popular books about the boy Bert (23 books between 1987–2010), with focus on the first title Berts dagbok [Bert’s diary]. Here I concentrate on three characteristic features: the carnivalesque degrading of the adult world, the grotesque realism (the world interpreted through the boy’s bodily experience), and play on words, such as rhymes, puns, jokes and deliberately misreading of foreign and difficult words. My point is that the readers (boys) through channels like this, learn the humorous discourse and that it creates intimate bonds between the narrator and the readers.Keywords: boy humour, boyology, bad boy books, Anders Jacobsson & Sören Olsson

“Quick, Ethel, Your Rifle!”: Portable Britishness and Flexible Gender Roles in G.A. Henty’s Books for Boys

Out on Pampas. With Clive In India. With Roberts to Pretoria. Maori and Settler. By Pike and by Dyke. These titles are no longer familiar, though their author, George Alfred Henty, dominated children's literature between 1871 and 1906. wildly prolific Victorian adventure writer had been among first correspondents who traveled globe and sent reports to London via telegraph. In this capacity, he covered Crimean and American Civil Wars, traveled through Near and Middle East, and documented colonial unrest in Africa and Pacific. His name thus carried cultural clout, adding further credibility to his for came to be known as The Boys' Historian, whose 90-odd children's novels were crafted to foster imperial spirit in young men by supplying absolutely trustworthy accounts of all great wars in which English people have been engaged since Norman Conquest (The Cornet Horse i-ii). These jingoist, racist novels, often accompanied by Henty's dedicatory essays to My Dear Lads, proved so that schools regularly limited number each student could borrow per week. Historian Bernard Porter describes a public school headmaster, for example, donating popular novels by ultra-imperialist G.A. Henty (52) for student use in 1890s. Circulated in libraries, purchased by parents, awarded as Sunday school and boys' club prizes, and read as history textbooks for Civil Service exams, Henty's canon, in words his biographer George Manville Fenn, taught more lasting history to boys than all schoolmasters his generation (320). Fenn's assessment suggests extent to which Henty's success hinged on his novels' educational appeal: including pirated editions, twenty-five million books were sold before 1914 (Arnold 17). (1) While many these boy readers later died in trenches Marne and Somme, names others who lived to recall fondly--Arthur Schlesinger, J. Paul Getty, Wendell Willkie, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, A. J. P. Taylor, Henry Miller, and Winston Churchill--speak to his lasting influence. Yet theirs became last who considered as a household name. During past five to ten years, however, Henty's canon has experienced a revival, in large part because American advocates schooling have rediscovered and promoted his work. Numerous reviews in right-wing and conservative Christian journals and websites applaud Henty's texts as model readings and thoughtful presents for children, especially boys. (2) These reviews often ignore Henty's racism by packaging his version empire as refreshingly heroic and patriotic. In New Criterion, for example, Brooke Allen claims: failure multiculturalism to provide American students with a truly multicultural education or worldview has been dismal, as we found out in panicked scramble for information and enlightenment after September 11 attacks. If we had all been reading Henty's To Herat and Kabul instead Babysitter's Club as children, we might have been better prepared! (23) In a column on American Right for Economist, Adrian Wooldridge specifies Henty's primary audience as the growing number people who, out religious conviction, academic frustration and, thanks to a spate school shootings, simple fear, choose to educate their children at home (30). These parents see as a hero ... [whose] books relentlessly preach virtues family loyalty, female modesty and patriotism (30). According to Wooldridge, many schoolers are so persuaded by ideological content Henty's novels that demand still exceeds supply (30) reprints. Before this boom in interest, Henty's novels were rare books, seldom if ever republished. Now Robinson Books, an Oregon-based publisher, has formatted ninety-nine novels as a CD-rom set. …

Pretty Sweet?: Hegemonic Masculinity, Female Physicality, and the Regulation of Gender in a Vintage Book Series for Girls

Pretty Sweet?Hegemonic Masculinity, Female Physicality, and the Regulation of Gender in a Vintage Book Series for Girls Ellen Singleton (bio) Introduction: Vicarious Living through Hybrid Literature At the beginning of the twentieth century, an innovation in literature for children was the introduction of book series aimed specifically at juvenile readers. Tomes heavily laced with moral lessons gave way to mass-produced and cheaply priced stories of adventure, fun, and friendship, first for boys, and, soon after, for girls (Romalov 87-97). Because publishers wanted sales, they strove to supply books that appealed to the interests of children. Books for boys that were "exciting and entertaining with juvenile heroes and juvenile villains, a great deal of action, some of which was plausible and some not, no sex, a minimum of dialogue and philosophy" were, although deplored by teachers and librarians, "bought by the millions" (Dizer 75). The Stratemeyer Syndicate dominated the production and marketing of book series specifically for children. By making books cheaper and thus more accessible to young buyers, Stratemeyer bypassed teachers and parents. Nancy Romalov describes the production of series books for girls as an "hybridization" process, whereby "the form and content of the girls' books imitated the boys' books, and the result was an hybrid literature in which girls vicariously could live the adventures of young heroines as 'new women' in a new century" (89). Peter Stoneley notes that the pairing of girls' series with boys' series enabled females to visualize a more adventurous life, but notes that "the apparent physical freedom is often conditioned by an intense and almost inescapable ideological control. There are attitudes and protocols to which the girls must conform at all times and in all places" (94). Publishers soon realized that they were caught in a difficult situation when it came to series books featuring sport and adventures that were aimed at a young female audience. Athletics, for example, requires displays of physical skill, determination, daring, risk, and independent behaviour, all traits [End Page 31] regarded as masculine at the time (Hall 64). Conventional opinions about women at the turn of the twentieth century were guided by deeply rooted cultural assumptions that female passivity and subordination should serve primarily as support for the public activity of males. There was very little public support for female sport competition, and few athlete role models for young women to emulate. For example, a few American women "entered women's tennis, golf and archery exhibitions in the 1900 and 1904 [Olympic] games, but their participation was not encouraged or well publicized" (Cahn 45). When Canadian and American women did begin to compete in a more organized fashion in the Olympic Games, their activities were severely restricted to sports, such as swimming or figure skating, that highlighted female health and beauty (Cahn 45; Hall 68). Nevertheless, a variety of cultural changes contributed to greater female interest and participation in sport and recreational games. As more women began to attend secondary and post-secondary institutions, schools provided more opportunities for women to participate in organized team sport. An influx of European immigrants accustomed to more varied and extensive sport participation for males and females and increased economic pressures resulting in more women in the workforce led to increased demands for recreational facilities and activities for workers (Hall 27-37; Hill 6-7; Cahn 44). The Girls of Central High book series for girls provided significant support for the athletic endeavours of young women at a time when a great deal of controversy enveloped women's participation in competitive sporting activities. A girls' book series featuring physically skilled, athletic, and yet feminine young women found ready acceptance in the imaginations of the girls for whom these books were published. As Nancy Romalov observes, "hybridization was bound to result in some degree of confusion, tension and contradiction" (89), and many potential book buyers—teachers, librarians, and parents—disapproved of books encouraging female children to emulate masculine behaviours (Ross 202-04). Notwithstanding the reservations of parents and librarians, book series for girls proved to be wildly popular from their inception. Stoneley notes that "between 1900 and 1910, forty-six new series for girls were begun; between 1910 and 1920, there...

A boy who would rather write poetry than throw rocks at cats is also considered to be wanting in masculinity: poetry, masculinity, and baiting boys

This paper draws on research on masculinities to examine poetry as a socially and culturally gendered genre. Situated in the context of the current ‘crisis’ around boys’ underachievement in school, attention is drawn to the problematic understanding of poetry as an unsuitable genre for boys. Attention is further drawn to the way in which poetry, when offered up to boys, is often imbued with traditional and outdated definitions of masculinity. We illustrate the extent to which hegemonic versions of masculinity are implicated in discourses about poetry as an unsuitable genre for boys. This is accomplished by undertaking a critical analysis of various sources such as Odean's (1998) Great Book for Boys, and Scieszka's (2005) Guys Write for Guys Read, as well as Iggulden and Iggulden's (2006) The Dangerous Book for Boys. Historical perspectives which highlight the role of sexologists in forging an association between poetry and effeminacy are also used to illuminate the legacy associated with the treatment of poetry somehow discordant with dominant understandings about boys’ developing masculinity. In this way, we provide a richer understanding of poetry and its discursive relationship to masculinity.

Adventurous Girls of the British Empire: The Pre-War Novels of Bessie Marchant

Historically, genre of adventure fiction most readily recalls books for boys and male heroes rather than girl readers and protagonists. These include enduringly well-known works such as H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (1885) and She (1887), early to mid-Victorian boys' stories of Frederick Marryat, W. H. G. Kingston, and R. M. Ballantyne and late-Victorian G. A. Henty's tales (his more than one hundred adventure stories sold in excess of 25 million copies). The novel of adventure at conclusion of nineteenth century recounted tales of male exploration on land or sea, and quests or conquests in real or imagined lands removed from gentility of civilized England. These generic features were aligned with masculine traits of activity and strength, and while girls could and did indeed read boys' adventure books, examples with female protagonists were uncommon in Victorian period. Joseph Bristow argues that between 1870 and 1900, narratives celebrating empire and techniques in teaching reading and writing gradually converged . . . [B]oth inside and outside classroom, there was more and more emphasis on heroic adventure, and this involved a number of shifts in attitude towards juvenile publishing and curriculum design (20–21). The works Bristow refers to were, of course, written by male authors about masculine adventurers. The novels of Bessie Marchant—sometimes called the girls' Henty —began to be published as nineteenth century drew to a close. Her girl heroines act independently in isolated areas in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South America, India, South Africa, Siberia, and Central America. From 1894 until her death in 1941, Marchant wrote more than a 130 novels, many of which celebrated capacity of British or colonial girls to rise to any challenge set before them in rugged.

The War against Boys: Has It Ended?

The war against boys has not ended. But it is a lot less ferocious these days. And boys have more allies than ever before. In the early nineties when I began research for the Wir Against Boys, few educators or journalists were talking about boys' academic deficits. There were no books like The Dangerous Book for Boys on the bestseller list. And there certainly were no conferences like this one on behalf of young men I am very impressed with your director, Tom Golden- and to all of you- for making this event happen. Let me briefly describe what it was like to be writing on behalf of boys ten or fifteen years ago The nation was in the grips of a full scale crisis . Scholars at Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Wellesley Center for Research and activists at the American Association of University Women (AAUW) had launched a wildly successful movement to rescue the allegedly shortchanged and demoralized American girl Girls definitely needed some special attention in math and science- and there was a need to get more of them interested in sports. But what emerged from this movement was a false picture of confused, silenced, diminished and forlorn girls, struggling to survive. This picture would be drawn again and again with added details and increasing urgency. Reviving Ophelia was by far the most successful of the girl-crisis books It was on the best-seller list for months. It described the lives of American girls in the language of catastrophe. Here is a passage from Reviving Ophelia: Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so do the selves of girls go down in droves. They crash and burn. (1994, p. 19) But contrary to the story conveyed in Reviving Ophelia, and many other books just like it, by the early 1990's American girls were flourishing in unprecedented ways. To be sure, some were crashing and burning in a psychological Bermuda triangle. But the vast majority of girls were occupied in more constructive ways, moving ahead of boys in the primary and secondary grades, applying to college in record numbers, filling the more challenging academic classes, joining sports teams, and generally enjoying more freedoms and opportunities than any young women in human history. Girls were not in crisis. If anything, the early nineties marked the beginning of a kind of Golden Age in girls' education. It was boys, not girls, who were on the fragile side of the education gap. But that was not the conventional wisdom at the time. The allegedly low state of America's girls moved the United States Congress to pass the Gender Equity Act in 1994, categorizing girls as an under-served population on a par with discriminated-against minorities. Millions of dollars in grants were awarded to study the plight of girls and learn how to cope with the alleged insidious bias against them. Girl Power! Movements flourished throughout the country. We took our daughters to work, and at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, members of the American delegation presented the educational and psychological deficits of American girls as a pressing human rights issue. By the way, academics like Caryl Rivers at Boston University and Susan Bailey at the Wellesley Center criticize some of us who advocate for boys for overstating our case. Where were these sticklers for moderation when the girl crisis was spinning out of control? (I will take up the question about overstating our case in a moment.) Well, what finally slowed down the Girl-crisis parade? I would like to think that books like mine and Michael Gurian's and Warren Farrell's helped slow things down. Maybe they did: but the real threat to the girl crisis movement was simple reality. Reality has a way of getting noticed. The underachievement of American boys compared to girls is impossible not to see. Teachers were seeing it before their eyes day after day in the classroom. …

Word Nerd (review)

Reviewed by: Word Nerd Deborah Stevenson Nielsen, Susin; Word Nerd. Tundra, 2008; [256p] ISBN 978-0-88776-875-0 $18.95 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 6–9 When Ambrose’s overprotective mother realizes the depths of her son’s unpopularity, [End Page 38] she takes Ambrose out of seventh grade and starts him on homeschooling. Spending all his time at home, he becomes fascinated with Cosmo, newly released from prison and now living in the upstairs apartment with his parents. Ambrose discovers that Cosmo is, like Ambrose himself, a Scrabble aficionado, so he wheedles Cosmo into secretly driving the both of them to the meetings of a Scrabble club. Thus begins a new chapter in Ambrose’s life, wherein Cosmo’s mentorship gives him a perspective he needs, his developing Scrabble (and social) skills provide him with new feelings of competence and acceptance, and his daring to do something that would be forbidden by his mother stiffens up his backbone. While this has many of the hallmarks of slapstick-touched boy books—bathroom humor, mammary appreciation—Canadian author Nielsen resists such titles’ usual tendency to pad their realistic edges, and she instead marries an age-appropriate jokiness to genuinely thoughtful writing. Ambrose isn’t merely a put-upon bullied lamb but a sometimes annoying kid who has, until Cosmo, lacked somebody with both the authority and perspective to knock him back when he’s being a jackass, and their brotherly, unstatedly affectionate relationship is well drawn. Secondary characters are also sturdily crafted: Cosmo, a youthful screwup making a serious effort to turn over a new leaf, isn’t romanticized, and Ambrose’s mother is sympathetic even as she’s overanxious and short-sighted. There’s humor and poignancy enough here for both fellow word nerds and those who just enjoy seeing a kid blossom under unlikely circumstances. Copyright © 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

George Meredith's Early Verse: A New Manuscript in His First Wife's Hand

Although his first collection of Poems (1851) received a fair measure of raise from reviewers and a handsome compliment from Tennyson, George Meredith soon came to regard the as an embarrassment and later wished he could suppress it entirely. He is said to have destroyed the unbound sheets for some three hundred copies of the Poems, (1) and he told John Lane that he destroyed the of an intended volume of British Songs after John W. Parker and Son declined to publish it at their expense in July (2) He must also have destroyed numerous loose manuscripts of individual poems, for nearly all of his early verse that survives in is contained in three bound volumes: two quarto notebooks in the Altschul Collection at Yale and an interleaved copy of his Poems in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. (3) Meredith's revulsion against his early verse was based on personal as well as aesthetic grounds, for much of it was inevitably associated with his first wife, Mary Ellen Nicolls, nee Peacock. His earliest known poems date from his association with Mary Ellen and other members of the Charnock circle in the production of their periodical Monthly Observer. Most of his early love lyrics were inspired by Mary Ellen, and his Poems were dedicated To Thomas Love Peacock, Esq., with the profound admiration and affectionate respect of his son-in-law. After Mary Ellen left him and bore a son by their mutual friend Henry Wallis, Meredith sought to distance himself from his own unpublished verse by treating it ironically in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), where he ascribes brief snippets to his adolescent hero and some longer passages to the sentimental poetaster Diaper Sandoe, Sir Austin's former friend and Lady Feverel's lover. On more than one occasion Meredith was willing to stretch the truth with respect to his early poetry. In a letter of November 13, 1861, he told his friend Augustus Jessop that the poems in my boy's book were before I was twenty (Letters, 1:109-110), when in fact most of them were written when he was twenty-one or twenty-two. Near the end of his life, when his anonymous contributions to Household Words were identified from entries in the contributors' book, he even suggested privately that most of them were written by his first wife-a view that his son William Maxse Meredith later argued publicly. (4) Since Mary Ellen was, in one way or another, the inspiration for much of his early work as a poet, it is interesting to find a in her hand containing transcripts of his early verse, including Three Maidens and six untitled poems or fragments, several of them previously unpublished. This was acquired by the Beinecke Library at Yale in 1975 as part of a miscellaneous collection of papers that once belonged to Mary Ellen's daughter Edith Nicolls Clarke. (5) Meredith scholars may have since overlooked its significance because the Yale cataloguer described Three Maidens as a manuscript poem possibly by Mary Ellen Meredith, despite the fact that it was published by George Meredith in 1859 and included in a collected edition of his Works in 1898. Of the untitled poems that occupy the remaining space in the manuscript, three can be found, either complete or in fragmentary form, in Meredith's Red Quarto Notebook at Yale. (6) Hence there is no reason to doubt that the previously unknown poems and fragments are also the work of George rather than Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen's transcripts fill all four pages of a double sheet of octavo notepaper with the watermark PIRIE & SONS | 1855. Since she apparently had access to a larger collection of her husband's verse, her copies must have been made while she was still living with Meredith-probably in 1856, or at any rate prior to the summer of 1857. (7) Three Maidens may have been transcribed from a fair copy, for it was finished some time prior to April 24, 1855, when Meredith sent a copy to his friend Tom Taylor in the hope that Taylor's fiancee, Laura Barker, might set it to music (Letters, 1:21). …

On the agenda: Books for schools − a novel approach

This month, the Government revealed a list of the top 160 books for boys and pledged to give 20 free books to secondary state schools across the country, to encourage boys to read for pleasure and keep up with their female counterparts.

Boys Don't Read - It's True!

Few educational experts would disagree that school-aged boys are falling behind their female counterparts in terms of reading and writing, a gap that both increases with grade levels, and has increased in recent years. Recent studies suggest this trend is not isolated to one geographic region or demographic group. It is all boys across North America and Europe. As a father of a seven-year old son, I worry about my son reading as he gets older. As an author of a Young Adult book series for boys, I worry if there is a market for my books. By the time high school hits over half of all boys describe themselves as non-readers. To make matters worse, the publishing industry has figured this out - and 'Boy Books' have disappeared from the shelves (apart from Harry Potter and its legions of copycats). The economic impact of poor literacy skills for half the population is self-evident. The spiritual impact of a child deprived of one of the great pleasures in life is less obvious, but perhaps even more detrimental to society.

Camps and tramps: Civilization, culture and the use of leisure in early twentieth‐century outdoor adventure series books for girls and boys

Series books, although “by no means literary masterpieces” (Inness, 1997, p. 96), serve as windows onto the popular culture of the time. Vintage juvenile fiction that focuses on the “new” leisure activities of camping and hiking provides valuable insights into the construction of race, class, gender and sexuality at the turn of the century. Not just representations of the modern historical period, these books provide insights into the “ideological density” of the era and as such broaden and strengthen our understanding about the role of leisure in our lives. The focus of this paper is on the “ideological density” of both series and single‐issue books for boys and girls featuring the leisure activities of camping and hiking.

Kiddie lit: the cultural construction of children's literature in America

Contents: 1. Kids and Kiddie Lit 2. What Fauntleroy Knew 3. Kiddie Lit in the Academy 4. The Case of the Boy's Book: Whitewashing Huck 5. The Case of the Girl's Book: Jo's Girls 6. The Case of American Fantasy: There's No Place Like Oz 7. The Case of British Fantasy Imports: Alice and Harry in America 8. The Case of the Disney Version

Boy Books

Boy Books

Desire and the Literary Machine

An incredibly prolific and successful producer of juvenile fiction, Edward Stratemeyer was responsible for many of the most popular early-twentieth-century series books for boys. Examining editions from three of these series, this article argues that the ethics of capitalist production that were central to Stratemeyer's success can be seen in the plot, characterization, and material qualities of the series books themselves. Furthermore, the thematic focus on the values of hard work and ingenuity in these texts facilitates a redirection of male sexual desire away from a romantic love interest toward the more acceptable object of capitalist production. This censorship of male desire reflects a broader relocation of the topography of masculinity into the theater of capitalist production that was characteristic of early-twentieth-century American culture.

Addressing Common Pediatric Concerns Through Children s Books

1. Ellen C. Perrin, MD* 2. Susan Starr, MEd* 1. 2. *Department of Pediatrics, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA. Books about common pediatric concerns read to or by children can serve several purposes: 1) provide accurate information, 2) normalize feelings and experiences, 3) facilitate conversations between parents and children about difficult topics, 4) help children develop strategies to cope with complex situations, and 5) develop understanding and empathy for children coping with a variety of circumstances. Our recommended list of books is based on how regularly we have received requests for book suggestions from parents, children, students, residents, and clinicians. There is a virtual explosion of books for children, and it is impossible to be inclusive either of all possible topics or of particular books within each topic. In some topic areas few books are available (eg, smoking); in others the vast array makes it very difficult and sometimes overwhelming to make a reasoned choice (eg, death or illness). An informal survey of community pediatricians yielded specific direction for the choice of topic areas. We have included books that address new babies, adoption, sibling rivalry/sibling love, puberty and sexuality, divorce, eating problems, learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, substance abuse, depression and mental illness, illness and disabilities, family violence, and death. Other topics deserve similar lists, such as descriptions of doctor and dentist visits and the process of physical examination, anatomy and physiology, child development, and specific parenting practices. We have not included videotapes or books in languages other than English. We have assembled a list of books that we think are among the best in each content area, although not necessarily the only excellent examples. We have included books appropriate for children of all ages and for the adults who care for them. Many of these books go out of print very quickly and may be accessed best through libraries. For the most current information, we suggest that …

Crosswriting the School Story

Crosswriting the School Story Kenneth Kidd (bio) Regendering the School Story: Sassy Sissies and Tattling Tomboys, by Beverly Lyon Clark. New York: Garland, 1996. Forget Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days (1857). Better yet, remember it differently, as the hypercanonical school story that, although still underappreciated, "warped not just the earlier but also the later history of the genre" (12). That larger history is Clark's subject, and she pursues an interesting line of inquiry that sets her project quite apart from earlier studies such as Isabel Quigly's The Heirs of Tom Brown and P. W. Musgrave's From Brown to Bunter. Noting the traditional inattention to both girls' stories and gender itself, Clark explores less canonical "crossgendered" school stories, written for boys by women and for girls by men. Authors of such stories, she argues, are doubly removed by age and gender from the conventions of the genre and are more likely to stray from them. Although crossgendering takes center stage, Clark also shows how school stories are written along and across generational, national, religious, class, and racial lines. Divided into three major sections, Clark's investigation of authorial identification and remove is quite engaging, as much a contribution to gender studies and literary historiography as a reassessment of this misunderstood genre. The introduction situates Hughes's Tom Brown as both a "watershed" (11) and an unfortunate primal scene. What Huck Finn is to the American boy book, Tom Brown is to the British boys' school story, and although Clark doesn't quite make this claim, I suspect that critical accounts of the school story also tend to imitate Tom Brown itself, just as early scholarship on Huck Finn echoes as much as analyzes Twain's literary strategies. In any case, the five chapters in part 1 defamiliarize the Hughes legacy by examining crossgendered school stories predating Tom Brown penned by British and American writers alike, among them Richard Johnson, Charles Lamb, Jacob Abbott, Dorothy Kilner, Maria Edgeworth, Emily J. May, and Mary Martha Sherwood. [End Page 215] At the same time, Clark shows that overcanonization can be a form of scholarly neglect. Clark alternates chapters that survey a posse of writers with chapters devoted to a few representative figures. She draws from an impressive range of texts, and her local readings are as fascinating as her larger revisionist claims. I found chapter 3 particularly instructive, a reading of Dorothy Kilner's First Going to School; or, The Story of Tom Brown, and His Sisters (1804); this was the first tale of Tom Brown, at once playful and didactic. Only "precariously a school story," Kilner's novel is less preoccupied with gender-bending than with animal-human "interface" (53). Young Tom is likened to a "stuck pig," a "little lamb," and a horse. Tom's father composes animal fables starring the family's calf, sow, and rabbits, and at the book's end, cousin Peter describes a prank featuring a sow and her pigs cross-dressed as a headmaster and his boys. Clark links this "cross-species crossdressing" (55) with the aims and anxieties of education and other civilizing projects. In the fourth chapter Clark elaborates on one of her central emphases, the trope of "talebearing"—telling and not telling tales—in both crossgendered fiction and crossgendered commentary like her own. Typically, talebearing has taken a critical back seat to those other master tropes of schoolboy fiction, insurrection and fagging. She discovers that some women writers are less likely to condemn tattling than their male counterparts, "calling into question the cosmetic unities of subsequent male authors" and even hinting "at the deviousness of all authors who tell tales about telling tales" (84). As she remarks in the introduction, school stories foreground both peer codes of loyalty and the teacher-student struggle, offering a useful glimpse into "the intersections of literature and pedagogy and the politics of schooling" (10). The five chapters in part 2 attend to tales that appeared during the "heyday of the canonical story" but are hardly Tom Brown clones. In this cluster Clark outlines how women writers in particular revised the school story by crossing gender with race and ethnicity (chapters 6 and...

Being a Boy Again: Autobiography and the American Boy Book (review)

Being a Boy Again: Autobiography and the American Boy Book (review)