Jump-Starting Boys: Help Your Reluctant Learner Find Success in School and Life

Sisters Withers (author of adventure novels, including Peak Survival) and Gill (a former high school teacher) offer a helpful collection of “hundreds of encouraging tips and tools” to help boys and young men embrace reading. They stress that reading is key to academic achievement even in subjects like math or science. In turn, academic achievement is tied to success in life as never before, as has been well-documented. The authors quote from numerous authorities, sometimes extensively, including child-rearing expert Rudolph Dreikurs; Michael Gurian, author on all things boy-related;, and children’s author and guysread.com founder Jon Scieszka. Withers and Gill share their own experiences as mothers, and as an author and therapist, as well as interviews with boys and men who have overcome reluctance or difficulty reading. Sidebars feature suggestions, brief topics related to chapter subjects, and longer quotes from outside sources. The book concludes with appendixes of more books, Web sites, and organizations. The variety of material makes the book feel like a packet handed to students at the beginning of a college course rather than a single sustained argument. Though the content could have been more elegantly structured, the book offers solid information for parents of boys. Agent: Lynn Bennett, Transatlantic Literary Agency, Canada. (Aug.)