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 WHY? I grew up with five brothers, taught elementary school for ten years, and have been writing books for kids for twelve years. I started writing books like The Stinky Cheese Man and the Time Warp Trio series in part because I didn’t see much of a guy sensibility in the worlds of elementary education and kids’ books. Now it’s time to do more. Too many boys still struggle with reading. Our boys need help. And that’s why I’ve decided to become a spokesperson for boys and for this literacy initiative called GUYS READ. Statistics show that as a group boys:
• Are more likely than girls to be placed in remedial classes or held back a grade • Rank lower in their class and earn fewer honors than girls • Get into fights twice as often, and commit suicide four times more often than girls. Something is not working for boys, but there is little to no direct research on gender and literacy, and not much in the way of support for boys’ literacy. There are literacy programs for adults, for students of English as a second language, for women, and for prison inmates. There are no literacy programs for boys. GUYS READ is, long overdue, a literacy program for boys.
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• Score lower in all grades on standardized reading and writing tests than girls