Boys Love Books - and (So Do) Their Mothers

Here are just a few things that mothers do for their children: make sure homework gets done, assist with “creative” school projects, cheer them on at games, prepare healthy lunches, remind them to clean their ears, and chauffeur from here to eternity.

Some mothers even start book clubs.  

That’s what a group of Jefferson moms did recently, when they noticed that their 3rd grade boys seemed to be losing interest in reading.  “We saw that our boys were having a hard time,” said Karen Nicholas, mother of Misha.  “At a certain point, it becomes very difficult to encourage them to read.”    

As a child, Nicholas was herself a reluctant reader.  She credits her mother with turning her into a bookworm.  “My mother always made reading fun; she never gave up on me,” she said.

With that memory in mind, Nicholas approached other moms at the school with an idea to form a mother-son book club.  The response was uniformly positive.  The group has now been meeting for several months, and it is a big success with both parents and kids. 

Nicholas already belonged to a book group with her older daughter.  But she knew this club had to take a slightly different tack to allow for – and honor – the boundless energy and exuberance of young boys.

“In my daughter’s book group, we usually start with a craft.  We don’t do that with the boys,” said Nicholas.  Instead, the moms make sure to break up the discussion into smaller segments, and plan plenty of physical activity in between.

For instance, the group has had a scavenger hunt, played a Jeopardy-like game and acted out scenes from books.  “We bring more of the book to life, rather than just sitting and talking,” she said. 

The moms have been pleasantly surprised by the boys’ attentiveness and enthusiasm.  “They usually need a certain amount of time to settle down in the beginning,” said Theresa Burns, who is in the club with her son, Evan.  “But once we start I am amazed by how much they focus.  They come up with great open-ended questions.”

A recent book selection was “Lunch Money” by Andrew Clements, about a 6th-grade boy who grudgingly teams up with a female classmate on an entrepreneurial scheme.   

The discussion kicked off with questions the mothers had prepared ahead of time.  One was, “Have you ever had to partner with a girl on a class activity, and how did it go?”   At one point, someone mentioned the book’s use of the word ‘conceited’ and one child leapt up and said, “I’ll check the dictionary!”  That triggered a lively debate about the word’s meaning.

Of course, boys being boys, fart jokes eventually made their way into the conversation – but the parents deftly steered the talk back on track.

One mother asked the boys about the main character: “If Greg were in your class, would you want to be friends with him?”  (One boy: “Yes, because he would give me money!”)  The talk turned to the subject of how much “stuff” we need to make us happy.  “Who here has enough Pokemon cards?” asked a parent, driving the point home. 

Some of the mothers reported that their children were initially wary about joining a book club.  “When I first brought it up, he didn’t want to do it,” said Burns.  “But when he read the (first) book, he thought it was really good.” Nicholas noted that the club tries to choose books with contemporary and realistic issues to which the boys can easily relate.  “It helps if there is a male protagonist,” she added.

Liz Anklow said of her son, Jack, “I had to make sure he would actually read the books,” she said. Mary Boyle agreed, noting that her son Kevin loves books “if someone is reading them to him.”

“I didn’t even ask my son, because he would have said ‘no’,” said Holland Grumieaux about Hudson. 

In the end, the social aspect seems to have made book-club converts out of the boys.  For their part, the mothers relish the one-on-one time they spend reading with their sons. 

“This is something we can do and enjoy together,” said Grumieaux.

It remains to be seen if any of these “reluctant” readers will become the bookworms of tomorrow, but if anyone can do it, these mothers can.