Applauding Mr. Spence

Thank you, Mr. Spence. Your article entitled "How to Raise Boys Who Read" succinctly states exactly what my gut has been telling me all along. Boys can learn to love reading! And they don't need dumbed down books full of gross-out humor to do it. We parents needs to set the bar higher than that.

Our boys are now eight, and they are turning into interesting, polite, educated, funny, well-rounded, and well-behaved young men. I'm proud of them. And, on top of all that, they really love to read. And we've never resorted to any of the foul books mentioned in Mr. Spence's article to pique their interest.

Now, don't get me wrong. HA and HW can hardly contain their giggles if someone burps at the table. They think smells are hilarious. They are absolutely all boy. But they are civilized. We don't feed them books that encourage them to act like animals. That's because we don't want them to act like animals.

Since our boys were very young we've enjoyed reading aloud together from books like The Wind in the Willows ~ it made them laugh out loud, fueled their imagination, and stretched their vocabulary. Now, in addition to classics, they devour how-to books, clean joke books, and science books. (They've learned more about God's amazing insects than I will ever know.) Right now their Daddy is reading Pat McManus to them every night, and they all get so tickled that we have to keep the door closed so they won't wake the baby. There are tons of great stories and great adventures out there for my boys to read. And those stories needn't focus on bathroom humor to hold their interest.

I should add that we don't have video games. If we did, I doubt I'd be writing this post. Instead, I'd probably be scouring the web trying to figure out how to get my boys to read.

Mr. Spence, who is president of Spence Publishing, closes with a great point:

"Most importantly, a boy raised on great literature is more likely to grow up to think, to speak, and to write like a civilized man. Whom would you prefer to have shaped the boyhood imagination of your daughter's husband—Raymond Bean or Robert Louis Stevenson?"