Getting Boys to Read

 

“No matter what I do Mr. Spinner, I can’t get my son to read. He hates it, he will do everything but read. And I’ve tried everything!” Of course I hear from the boys themselves… “ I hate reading Mr. Spinner. You can’t make me read. I’d much rather be: playing X-Box, shooting hoops, sticking needles in my eyes." After 17 years in the middle school classroom, I am sure I’ve heard them all and I can honestly say, it’s bunk. Boy will read, they do read, they crave stories, they want heroes and heroines, boys have a desire for action and even, romance. Let me start with the worst case-scenario.

Circa June 2003

My classroom looks strange to me as it is dark outside. Maybe twice a year I’m in my room when it’s dark outside.  I’m moving the piles around, mindlessly prepping for summer. Sweat is drying on my shirt as I’m enjoying  the melancholy after-glow of our graduation ceremony. I hear footsteps coming down the second floor hallway. Must be the janitor or one of my 8^th grade colleagues, I think. I look up to see the father of a student standing in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. Uh oh, what does he want?  I think. “I NEVER do this kind of thing, “ he bellows into my quiet classroom. I’m trying to place whose father he is and more importantly to deduce what I might have done wrong. “I have to come in and shake your hand Mr. Spinner.” (Phew, it’s one of those meetings.) “I don’t know what you did to my son but my wife and I have been begging and pleading for years to get him to read. We’ve tried everything, and somehow you got him to read. I can’t tell you how happy we are. Everywhere we go, his face is in a book. You awoke something in him, and we are so grateful. I felt compelled to tell you that in person.”  I deflect.  “It was nothing really (Inside I’m beaming, I love this part of the job). All I did was get to know your son. I learned a little bit about who he was and what made him tick and we took it from there. I knew about his interest in the military because we had been chatting about shows on The History Channel and the rest, as they say, is history.”

In that story is, for the most part, the recipe for getting your boys, or any reluctant reader, to read:

Follow their Passion…allow boys to choose books about things they like. Just like us, they will be energetic and enthusiastic in researching/reading about something that interests them. No DuhJ How many of you avoid your book club books because you didn’t choose it? How about procrastinating on those periodicals you have to read for work? That’s all very normal. You know your boys, think about their hobbies, concentrate on their interests and then take them to the library or the bookstore. Nudge them in the right direction. For me, and a lot of boys, the entrée was biographies of sports heroes. I was a Met fan but the first books I really remember were about Yankee greats Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. I mean the Mets were a young team when I was growing up so…

Choice…this might be the most important part. You have to allow them to choose their own books, it’s paramount. The sense of empowerment they derive is crucial. Remember our boys live in a world where they have to ask for money, or a ride to the park. Let’s not forget, our kids live in a world where they are told when to go to bed…they love to make their own choices. Readers will naturally go to where their passions lie. You might have to rein in your desire to put a classic or a “real” book in their hands, at least at first. Those books might come over time.  Over the years, how many of us were turned off of reading because we HAD to read Dickens or Shakespeare? In 10^th grade Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton almost did me in but luckily the Reading Bug already had a good hold on me by that age. It’s been my experience, in the Reader’s Workshop, that this is the MOST important thing, letting readers choose their own books.

Be Lenient: Turn a blind eye to some of the books they might choose. Allow them to read something inappropriate (within reason).  Adolescents are naturally rebellious, we can all remember being  that age. Why do you think Rock & Roll and Punk Rock and Rap are so popular among that age group? If boys think they are pushing the envelope, if they are quietly snickering and sharing excerpts with their friends about masturbation or violence or criminal activity…who cares? By hook or by crook I say. Get them hooked and they’ll stay hooked. They’ll think it’s really cool that they are doing something slightly inappropriate and you might score some points as a cool parent. Lord knows we can all use a few of those points right? 

Start Small: With some of our really reluctant readers, a graphic novel might have to suffice at first. Get them in the habit of sitting down, of turning pages, of sharing excerpts with friends and family…even if it’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid, baby steps. As Lau Tsu said, A thousand mile journey begins with one step. 

Read:  Now I don’t want to get preachy here but I chuckle at the frustrated parents who tell me they can’t get their kids to read but when I ask,  “What are you reading now?” I get a blank stare. You have to model, nothing worse for a teenager than the Do as I say, not as I do school of parenting. Read a book, go to the library with him, maybe even read the same book so you can connect around the literature. Then go see the movie when it comes out. All of these things will help him as a reader and I’m sure as a person.

 

Goals and incentives: Although altruistically, I think reading is its own reward, some boys might need an additional incentive. Buy them books. Don’t you remember the first hard cover book you owned? My aunt bought me a copy of Where the Wild Things Are, complete with the shiny foil seal because it was a Caldecott Award Winner. I loved that book. What better way to show your boys that reading is important than to spend your hard earned money on books?  Or try other incentives besides books?  Show them you value it, that you think it’s that important by telling them you’ll get them that Lego Star Wars Tie-Fighter or that Madden 2015 game if they read  3 books in 3 months. To get them into a pattern of setting goals and reaping rewards can be a life-long lesson.

Life Long Goals: Connect reading to all of the things they want out of life. I want to go to Harvard? Duke? Michigan? SUNY Buffalo (my alma mater)…then you should read. It’s the readers in the world who succeed. I want a beach house. I want to start my own company. I want to be a veterinarian. I want  a townhouse on the Upper West Side. I want to be a writer….again, reading is one of the keys to success.

Use your resources:  Your local library probably runs some type of Summer Reading incentive program. Kids will often get a bag filled with treats and directions on how to participate. They’ll not only be reading but they might win some Itunes cards or gift cards to a bookstore or other prizes. Your local librarians, particularly the YA or Teen librarian will help you choose the right book for your child. This is what they do, it’s their job and they are always up on the current titles. Our local YA librarians have been an invaluable resource to me and my students.

Make it social: Talk about reading and books with friends. Start a Book Club or join some groups at your local library. See what they offer at school. We often think of reading as a solitary endeavor but it’s really very social when done right.

Correct Level Text: Make sure the books are the right level. Readers will get really frustrated, and not want to read, if they can’t understand the book. You can ask the teachers for their reading level. A simple rule we teach our students is the Five Finger Rule: If there are five words on any given page that are too difficult for you, then that book is probably too hard for you. It’s tricky because as they move through the grades, reluctant readers fall further behind and often times become self-conscious of the level of text they are reading relative to their peers.  If a book is tough but they still want to try it, to stretch themselves, reinforce for them the strategies they learned at school for deciphering difficult text: Read slowly/closely, reread, use context clues, read the next few sentences, look things up, ask someone. 

To close I’ll go back to my classroom and the gracious father: his son…after leaving the Woodbury Middle School as an avid reader, graduated towards the top of his class at the local high school. Went to Marist College where he majored in History, something he was passionate about. Now that once reluctant reader is applying to grad schools that revolve around his passion of military history. This was possible, in part, because we were able to kindle his love of reading in my 8^th grade classroom. I hope this helps your boys find some good books and hopefully, sparks a love of reading that will lead to so many life-affirming benefits.

Of Course Of Course

Barnes & Noble is closing its flagship store on 5^th Avenue and 18^th Street. The economies of the book business and the real estate market are colliding; and we are losing this iconic store.  The vestiges of my youth are disappearing. News of the store’s closing caused a slight shift in the tectonic plates of my psyche. That store has always been there; a mooring place in a city that’s changing at the speed of a New York Minute. Since the early 80’s, when I worked there during high school and college, I could count on the store being there. Walking around Manhattan over the past 30 years, I occasionally head into the store, finding comfort in the familiar: the aisles, the signs, the smells, the set-up.  Sporadically during my college years, I was a messenger in Manhattan, delivering packages to banks and law firms; and I always oriented myself by the bookstore. Barnes and Noble as anchor point,  5^th Avenue and 18^th street, the dividing line between East and West and downtown and midtown.

Senior year in high school, 1980…

Glen Gruder, part of our East 4^th Street crew, is three years older than me. Glen’s  a junior at NYU during my senior at John Dewey High School. Late in his sophomore year at NYU, Glen got a job at Barnes & Noble. Back in our neighborhood, hanging out on Ronny Lopez’s stoop, Glen regaled us with stories of Greenwich Village, of college courses, and of some of the characters he was meeting at the bookstore. Towards the end of August Glen says, “Spinner, you should come into the store, they always need guys.” Glen is not one to dole out praise, so I always appreciated that he thought enough of me to recommend me for any number of jobs, Barnes & Noble, Silver Lake, jobs that changed my life.

Talk about a kid in a candy store.  An avid reader early on, I devoured books through grammar school and into high school. I would  not only be working in A bookstore but THE bookstore, the main branch of Barnes & Noble; on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. According to the 1980 Guinness Book of World Records, it’s the largest bookstore in world. And I’m getting a job there!  While most of my friends toil in our neighborhood pizzerias, pharmacies and butcher shops, I’ll be working in The City.

It’s an early September day of my senior year and my Barnes & Noble interview keeps popping up in my thoughts. I leave John Dewey High School around noon, catch the B train at Bay 50^th Street and settle in for the hour or so ride into Manhattan. After 3 years of commuting to Dewey I’m a jaded straphanger. Book in hand, I veg out and read, maybe I even sleep. About 40 minutes into the ride I am shocked, like walking out of a movie theater in the daytime, by sunlight. To get into Manhattan on the B, you cross the East River via the Manhattan Bridge.  There it is before me, The City, the stuff of movies, picture Dorothy and company seeing Oz for the first time. To the left the Brooklyn Bridge, the canyons of Wall Street, the Twin Towers. As we clatter across, I’m a frenetic puppy, on the right side of the train I see Chinatown, the Bowery, the FDR drive ribbons the river towards the UN and the Citicorp Center. I don’t know how many times I’ve taken the B train across the bridge but that view never gets old. Every day I commute to the city, I put my book down and become a tourist.

Off the B train at Union Square. Now those of you who remember Union Square in the early 80’s before Giuliani and Bloomberg cleaned up the city, know Union Square was a scary place. Littered with newspapers, a cast of seedy characters lurking around, everything engulfed by gray hulking buildings, dirty squirrels skitter to lifeless trees.  I’d  heard the term Needle Park in movies and had seen it in books, and from that day forward, I assumed Needle Park referred to Union Square.  Immediately, my city sense told me to avoid Union Square, even in the daytime.

I make my way to the store, a wide-eyed boy among the tall buildings, too spellbound to even act cool. On the corner of 5th Avenue and 18th Street I look up, Barnes & Noble in gold letters across the front, two revolving doors, fancy. Emerging from the revolving door, I am hit with new book smell. The store is designed for movement, for volume. You enter to the right of where the cash registers are, there are enough registers for 8 or so lines.  I meander through the store, past all of the displays, new Lawrence Sanders and Robert Ludlum hardcovers, past the different sections, Fiction, Classic, Self-Help, Biography…fighting the urge to browse….I find my way to textbooks for my interview with R.J. Odle.  R.J.’s a good old boy from Arkansas. If I was 18, he was probably late 30’s. He was funny but odd. He’d lob inappropriate jokes about pretty girls to show you that he was a regular guy. R.J. was a touchy guy, he’d tap your knee, or rub your shoulder as he walked by, an attempt to make you feel comfortable that sometimes did the opposite.  It really wasn’t much of an interview, just a rubber stamp. R.J. was an adult, probably spent a life in the book business and now he’s managing the text book department of Barnes & Noble. In the early 80’s, when everyone was still shopping in person and a lot of people shopped at B&N, he managed about 150 employees, mostly college-age guys, and a few women.  In most of the jobs I had had in the past, like at The Not-So-Kosher Deli, there were only a handful of employees, never enough to move beyond the interpersonal to the political. At Barnes & Noble I learned about work-place politics, mentors and protégés.  RJ doled out the work schedule, he could give out the cushy jobs, like going to the warehouse to sort books. R.J.  dictated what aisle you worked in, which could decide your fate in the store. He was my boss but it went beyond that, looking back now I can see that it was good if a guy like R.J. liked you.

I finally have a job that’s on the books, so I fill out a W-2 and other payroll information. This is real. Then R.J. takes me to pick out my “uniform.” Everyone at B&N wears what amounts to a light jacket. It’s tan, single-breasted with two big pockets for storing the accoutrements of the job (pens, markers, highlighters, stickers. You pin your name tag above your heart and you are on your way.  Most guys I worked with didn’t like our uniforms, something to be avoided, to be taken off immediately. I heard people referring  to it as a smock. I didn’t see it as a smock, I saw it as something akin to a prep school blazer. Putting on that jacket made me feel important, it confirmed for me that the job was serious. I worked for years in a neighborhood deli wearing white, mustard-stained aprons. Now I commute to Manhattan on the subway and I have on a blazer. I look at all of the other guys and gals, sophisticates, learned people who know books, people like Franco in Sociology who knows the difference between sociology and psychology. People like Mitch Paluscek who knew that George Eliot was a woman and Somserset Maugham was a guy.…I aspired to be one of them.

R.J.  puts me in Aisle 2, Psychology. I know a little about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung from Mr. Ronaldson’s Psychology of Literature class.  There are 8 aisles in textbooks and each is a fiefdom. The aisles take on the personality of the aisle boss and the personnel under them. Guys were proud of their aisles. They liked to razz each other. And of course with all that testosterone, things were competitive. There was an underlying competition about a lot of things, mostly related to knowledge and speed. Who knows more books? Who knows where things are? Who can help customers the fastest?  Who has been working at the store the longest? Who knows the lore?  I loved it.  

Geoff Waters was the Aisle Chief of Aisle 2, an adult Boy Scout, the kind of guy who would grow a beard, smoke a pipe and collect comic books.  I knew early on that I wanted to be good at the job. I respected guys that were confident, that knew their stuff. Customer walks in with a syllabus from their class, especially if it’s a pretty girl, guys would rush over,  a guy like Peter Pabon, my former baseball coach and another mentor from my neighborhood, knew his stuff… “Let me see what you need here? Oh, you’re taking Professor Johnson’s class…you need Economics by Samuelson and you’ll need, Hey Jimmy, grab me a copy of….” This stuff impressed me.

Because I was one of a handful of younger guys, there was only a few of us still in high school, we were a novelty. In addition to Glen and Pete Pabon, there were other veteran guys that were nice to me, that took me under their wing. Like a rookie in a major league dugout, there were veteran guys to show you how to do the job. Joe Peluso, Geoff’s second in command,  Richie “horse legs” Dave took it upon themselves to show me the ropes. And a long-haired dude, I thought he looked like a native American from a movie, a drummer in a rock band, Doug Montijo gave me tips on how to edge a book, how to find a book in the basement, how to use a pricing gun. I always appreciated that.

Maybe it’s because I was a novelty? I was small, even for a high school senior, I might have been 120 pounds? But so many people were really nice to me early on, veteran guys that really could have hazed me, could have given me crap but I escaped all but the most benign razzing. I’m sure guys could see an earnest kid, a newbie I suppose but underneath a street-wise kid. They see themselves in me, remembered someone who had looked out for them,  and offered a helping hand when they first started. For the first time in my life I think, I tiptoe into the social pool. I’m intimidated, these people are older, they’re sharp, there was a hierarchy and I knew enough to keep my mouth shut, initially.   Along with me, the other high school guys: Jimmy Pisianello, Richie Galtieri, Vinny Gione gravitated to each other.  Somebody, I’m going to guess John Carli, saw us hanging together and dubbed us the Kindergarten Krew. A moniker we liked, we took to calling ourselves, the Kindergarten Krew.

With all of this mental stimulation, the barrage of new information, new subway stations, bookstore terminology, New York City lore, it’s no wonder that I gravitate to the familiar. I could be expanding my horizons, hanging out with new people. For the first time in my life, I’m meeting openly gay guys, Rodney from Special Orders, among others. I’m meeting people from other countries, Nadia from South Africa with a great body and that accent. I am meeting people from all over the city, interesting people, and what do I gravitate to? Brooklyn guys, high school guys, just like me.

I learn stuff, not all connected to the bookstore like: what train line to take to get to the Garden, how to scalp a ticket to the Ranger game, where to switch to other train lines to get to the West Side or the East Side.  Guys knew about neighborhoods, about ethnicities and back then we talked about it openly: Pollacks from Greenpoint, Woodside Irish, Puerto Ricans from East Harlem…

I raced to work every day. By senior year, in order to graduate John Dewey High School, I only needed English and Gym. I already had enough credits in Science, Social Studies, Math but everyone has to sign up for a full slate of classes.  I would sign up for multiple English and Gym classes as well as a sprinkling of Math and Social Studies. In order to work a long day at the store, I needed my English and Gym classes early in the morning.  If I wind up with English period J or something, I’m hosed, I’d spend the whole day at school, waiting for English class so I sign up for multiple classes and just drop the classes that meet in the afternoon.

The store had its own vocabulary, a lexicon. Some of the words were particular to the store, to the book business but the words that I remember, that stayed with me were different.  Manny Ortega worked in Sociology/Law, which was part of text books but it was in the big room right before the “official” text books department. The guys in Sociology and Law became point men, they would see the customers coming in before anyone in text books.

“Hammer. Hammer.  Aisle 2.” 

I keep hearing this, “Hammer. Hammer Aisle 4.”

“Hammer. Hammer at Special Orders.”

It doesn’t take long for brains and testosterone to deduce that Hammer is B&N code for an attractive girl. It was ingenious. You could say it anywhere, yell it as loud as you wanted and the customers, especially the Hammer, were oblivious. Of course as young men in B&N jackets come from all over the textbooks department, any sharp, pretty girl would realize Hammer was code.

Some of our terms were not as cleverly disguised. Most of the guys I hung out with were regular guys. We played roller hockey and softball and drank beers and talked about New York sports.. This was the early 80’s, and the store was just north of the Village, so we’d see some “characters.”  Every once in a while, we’d have a punk rocker with a purple Mohawk,  leather jacket with safety pins  and you’d hear Jimmy Angotta yell, “NORMAL.” He’s yelling it right near the guy as he busies himself with some books. Billy Idol would  be shopping for text books, going from aisle to aisle and every once in a while some clerk from Brooklyn or Queens, like Billy Goozner is yelling, “NORMAL” right in the guy’s ear. I’m surprised one of us didn’t get punched.

This was the first job I had that paid me through lunch. Paid to eat lunch, what a concept. If it was nice out, we’d probably loiter in front of the store, grab a hot dog from a street vendor, maybe we’d walk over to Paragon Sporting goods to look for a t-shirt or a new hockey jersey. Most of the time, we’d find a little comfort in the break room; a decent sized rectangle of a room that held a few couches and a handful of cafeteria type rectangular tables. Guys would hold court in there. It was a riot, constant jokes and verbal barbs. I was fastidious in my 15 minutes or half hour, watching the clock like a stop watch. I remember some of the veterans, like John Carli, Manny, Joe Rizzo, they didn’t care, they knew it wasn’t a real job for them in the long run. And besides, what self-respecting aisle chief is going to mess with any of the elder statesman of the text book dept? The reigning king of the break room was Don Cilia.  

Don was an oversized guy with a big laugh and an even larger personality. He seemed to be the longest serving B&N employee, one of the fonts of B&N lore, and politically, he had pull. He could take a lot longer than a 15 minute break and nobody would say anything to him. It helped that Don really knew his stuff, when the store was really busy, a guy like Don would shine. I loved the break room, it was a whole new learning annex. One time, Don is sitting right by the vending machine with the chips and candy in it and some deliberate employee has plied his quarters into the machine and is taking just a little too long in choosing. We are all sitting there chatting and subconsciously watching this guy torture himself with Hershey Bar or Milky Way. He’s looking and holding his chin, moving to make the choice, but no, hand back on chin, eventually, it’s too much for Don. “Fuck it” he reaches up and pulls a random lever and walks away. To this day, one of the funniest things I have ever seen. “What the fuck Don! I didn’t want Fritos.” 

Early on in my B&N career we’re sitting in the break room and Don says, “Who’s up for a game a Liars?”  I had no idea what he was talking about. But I quickly learned about Liar’s Poker…

It was an interesting game of intrigue, feints, bidding, guessing, outsmarting, it was perfect for a boatload of wise-asses from Brooklyn and Queens. The game rewards aggression and passivity. In each game there’s really one big winner or one big loser and everyone else wins or loses the dollar they played with. Everyone has a dollar bill and the combination of all of the serial numbers on all of the bills, comprises a poker hand. The idea is to bid the highest possible hand, to stretch the limits until everyone else decides they can’t outbid you. If you have the right bid, you win everyone’s dollar, a potential killer payday if 12 or 14 guys are playing. If you bid too high, everyone challenges you and you lose, you have to pay everyone in the game, a dollar. The early bids are interesting because you know nobody is going to challenge 3 deuces or 3 8’s so these bids can be, and often times are, lies. You don’t want to tip your hand early but as you get to the point where bids are getting higher, that it’s risky to top a bid, you have to have some 2’s or 8’s in your bill/hand. In a big group of guys you have the guys that are really in it to just risk the dollar, to try and win or lose just that dollar. And then you have the guys who are looking for the big score. As you play, you get to know each other’s tendencies, like real poker, you might learn a tic or a tell. The game got really funky the more we played because people started searching out good bills. Guys would bid phenomenal amounts and you’d think, there’s no way there’s 15 7’s out there but Harry Rivera’s been pushing 7’s and so has Barone. I don’t have anything that can top that but I have 3 7’s. Eventually, there is a perfect bid, there’s a bid that if you get called, you’ll win. If you push too far, you’ll crash and burn. The best part was the banter, the reactions of guys when they win or lose. The long-standing memory is of a guy winning, and everyone tossing their money at him, be it Don Cilia or Gruder or Mike Infurna…”Oh, bullshit! You got a bill with 7 9’s on it you sand bagging prick?”  And you’d watch and learn about behavior….Guy loses two or three hands, is he cool? Is he flustered? Does he play scared the next time or try to win his money back. God it was fun.

Sometimes for lunch we’d venture out to the local restaurants. I loved this, any chance to learn the city, my new city. One day we are talking about where to go to lunch, and like a lot of New Yorkers, particularly New Yorkers on a budget, our talk turned to pizza.

Mike Rizzo poses, “You guys want to go down to Ray’s Pizza?” 

“Oh, I don’t know, it’s a walk, and there’s always a line at Ray’s.”

“It’s a Saturday, how long will the line be?”

A pizzeria with a long line? I’m intrigued… “What’s the big deal about this pizzeria? Why will there be a line?”

And that clinches it, Rizzo says, “HO, HO, Spinner’s never been to Ray’s. You’ve NEVER been to Ray’s? That settles it, we’re going to Ray’s”

I loved learning new stuff about the city, particularly the Village, there was something cool about 8^th Street, Bleecker Street, McDougal Street. To be carousing the same streets as the Beat Poets, as so many striving musicians like Bob Dylan, like Springsteen had before, was heady stuff for a Brooklyn kid. Often times, after we got out at 6:45 (isn’t it funny that 30 years later, I still remember what time the store closed?) I would walk along 5^th Avenue, towards Washington Square Park. Rather than grab the F at 14th Street, I extended the walk, sometimes all the way down to Broadway-Lafayette, wanting to learn more.  I loved being a commuter, I felt so adult, to be part of the city’s social fabric. I read so many books during my time at B&N, because of access to books and time on the subway. At that time, everyone was reading thrillers by Robert Ludlum or mass market paperback fiction books like Lawrence Sanders’ First Deadly Sin, or the epic Irish saga, Trinity by Leon Uris, Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I wasn't in college yet, but you could say I started my education at Barnes & Noble University.

I would love to implore you to please purchase books at your local booksellers. If you enjoy browsing in a bookstore, perusing random shelves for that serendipitous reading adventure, you HAVE to purchase some books at the store once in a while. Even if it’s cheaper on Amazon, we have to support our brick & mortar bookstores or those days of lazily enjoying a few hours of picking up random titles and following a book scent like a bloodhound will be gone.