Edweek reporter Mary Ann Zehr attended and filed this report:

Authors Share Tips on How to Hook Boys on Books
By Mary Ann Zehr

Winchester, Va.
Boys like to read books about trucks, boys who get into trouble, sports, animals, and war. More than girls, they lean toward nonfiction. And don’t forget the humor or action in stories.

Those are some of the insights that well-acclaimed children’s authors and illustrators­-most of them men-conveyed to about 300 teachers and librarians-most of them women-at a conference here this week hosted by Shenandoah University about how to get boys hooked on reading.

At the same time, a couple of authors and an illustrator stressed how boys are drawn as well to books with a strong emotional quality.

For an illustration in a book to be effective, “there has to be some emotional appeal,” said Jerry Pinkney, who is known for his illustrations that show a strong connection between people and animals. “What’s important in my work is not just the action but what’s around the action,” the artist said, showing the audience one of his illustrations from the picture book, Black Cowboy, Wild Horses, in which a cowboy is feeding his horse an apple.

Mr. Pinkney explained that he created a feeling of intimacy in the scene by having the cowboy give his horse the apple after he’s taken the time to remove the bridle and reins.

Boys, said Jack Gantos, who writes books about bad boys, “like the emotional stuff as much as the physical stuff.” The author of the Rotten Ralph and Joey Pigza series says that half the content in his books is about what happens on the outside of the character, including lots of action, and half is about what happens inside the character. A theme in his books is that the characters are loved unconditionally, even if they mess up a lot, which he said is something that children can identify with.

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So where does that leave the United States, which is still caught up in an ideologial debate about whether boys are truly falling behind in school?

 Still, New Zealand is worried.

It’s true what they say about Australia. The federal government investigated the issue and tested prototype interventions to solve the problem. The best of those solutions were then made available to schools interested in tackling the issue. (For more details, order my book. Did you happen to notice the “pre-order tab at the top of my site?).

As I discovered during my visit to Australia, however, making the interventions available doesn’t mean all schools will take advantage of the offer.

From the press release:

NZ needs to address boys’ education concerns
Thursday, 2 July 2009, 3:42 pm
Press Release: NZ School Trustees Association

Media Release

NZ needs to address boys’ education concerns

New Zealand is behind the eight ball when it comes to addressing concerns over boys’ education in schools.

That’s according to Auckland-based teachers Alison Derbyshire and Nicola Agnew, who are spreading the word on their findings of research into boys’ education.

Their research shows there is a significant gender gap in students’ achievement, especially in literacy-based subjects such as English.

Latest statistics from the 2008 NCEA results support their claim, with girls outperforming boys at every senior level.

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As you probably noticed, my book jacket has replaced the graphic about boys’ lagging interest in higher education. Plus, there’s a link to a newly opened Facebook page. Be among the first to join me there!

I’m hoping the message of the book will reach the U.S. Department of Education, which to date has steered clear of the gender gaps. On one level, that’s understandable…the gap issues (for bizarre reasons you’ll read about in the book) have devolved into gender sniping. But this issue can’t be ignored forever: The only way for DOE to accomplish its primary goal of boosting post-high school study rates is to tackle the boys issue. The same holds true for foundations, which to date have sidestepped the issue as well, presumably for the same reason.

DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has contributed a great foreword to the book, which I hope will draw in the school reform community that tends to focus on race and income but not gender issues within those groupings.

Bill Costello from Making Minds Matter offers these observations from high scoring Taiwan:

American Educational Researcher Abroad Studying Taiwan’s School System

TAIPEI CITY, TAIPEI, TAIWAN (June 30, 2009) - Bill Costello, training
director of Making Minds Matter, has been visiting schools in Taiwan to
research successful aspects of the Taiwanese school system that could be
used to improve the American school system.

Costello said: “Three factors contributed to my understanding of the
Taiwanese education system. First, I read many articles about it. Second,
I visited two Taiwanese public schools wherein I observed common practices
and several subjects, including science, math, language arts, social
studies, physical education, and recess. Third, I interviewed the teachers
and administrators at both schools.”

The Taiwanese education system produces students with some of the highest
test scores in the world in science and math.

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But I just learned about this conference  on reading/boys in my home state. If it helps anyone lining up speakers for their own conference, here’s the agenda of Reading…It’s a Guy Thing:

Agenda
24th Annual Children’s Literature Conference
Shenandoah University
June 29-July 3, 2009

Reading… It’s A Guy Thing: Hooking Boys on Books

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As this essay in Education News reminds us, homework remains a dilemma. Some argue that the bulk of “boy troubles” involve homework, as in…even if boys do it, they don’t turn it in. See Smart Boys, Bad Grades by William Draves.

I remain mixed. There’s plenty of evidence to support the observations made by Draves. When I visit schools, it’s clear that homework is a major contributor to the gender grade gap. Still, I have to assume that’s always been the case. How can homework explain the academic collapse we’ve seen only in the past twenty years? 

Those who dispute there’s a gender revolution unfolding in the workplace tend to focus on the White House, the U.S. Senate and the leadership of the Fortune 500 companies. Granted, the change there is glacial. But focusing only on those indicators misses the broader change taking place in an economy that’s now majority female.

Today’s Washington Post story on female farmers makes a nice contribution toward rounding out this story:

Nicholas Kristof in today’s New York Times takes on what Leonard Sax dealt with in an entire book, Boys Adrift. Odd that Kristoff didn’t quote Sax. I’m posting this from a cabin in the Shenandoah Valley overlooking the South Fork of the Shenandoah, one of the rivers in the Potomac watershed where fish abnormalities — male smallmouth bass developing eggs — have been found.

Males, whether fish or human, are more vulnerable to pollutants. If you want the full scary picture, I suggest giving Sax’s book a read.

Here’s Kristoff:

In the Potomac watershed near Washington, male smallmouth bass have rapidly transformed into “intersex fish” that display female characteristics. This was discovered only in 2003, but the latest survey found that more than 80 percent of the male smallmouth bass in the Potomac are producing eggs.
Now scientists are connecting the dots with evidence of increasing abnormalities among humans, particularly large increases in numbers of genital deformities among newborn boys. For example, up to 7 percent of boys are now born with undescended testicles, although this often self-corrects over time. And up to 1 percent of boys in the United States are now born with hypospadias, in which the urethra exits the penis improperly, such as at the base rather than the tip.
Apprehension is growing among many scientists that the cause of all this may be a class of chemicals called endocrine disruptors. They are very widely used in agriculture, industry and consumer products. Some also enter the water supply when estrogens in human urine - compounded when a woman is on the pill - pass through sewage systems and then through water treatment plants.
These endocrine disruptors have complex effects on the human body, particularly during fetal development of males.
“A lot of these compounds act as weak estrogen, so that’s why developing males - whether smallmouth bass or humans - tend to be more sensitive,” said Robert Lawrence, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s scary, very scary.”

Christina Hoff Sommers from the American Enterprise Institute makes her case.

…whether high schools have become too college-track oriented. That new orientation, which the governors launched two decades ago after meeting in Charlottesville, aspires to put all students on a college-track curriculum. The rationale: Nearly all students need some kind of post-high school education to survive in today’s marketplace.

That logic is hard to take issue with, as this New York Times article makes clear. What those governors never realized, however, is that ramping up the verbal demands in the early grades would leave a lot of boys behind. Many never catch up.

In theory, schools could adjust to help boys adjust, but I don’t see that happening in the near future. My evidence? The U.S. Department of Education has yet to launch a single study into why so many males are falling behind in school and failing to attain the post-high school education they need.