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This article gives a listing of authors and books that would be of interest to someone who wants to learn more about science. It also gives a breakdown of what their books are about. This information is interesting to me because I am a science teacher. Not all students want to learn more about science, but I have had some students ask for recommendations for books they could read. I really like that I now have the ability to do so. I can already think of a few students who I know would like to read several of these books.

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In this longitudinal study, 852 students from high-poverty schools were given a supply of self-selected books on the last day of school for 3 years. Students in the treatment group performed significantly better on the state reading assessment than most students in the control group.

This is an important study, and related to the article Brett shared in terms of students selecting books of interest to them.

"Teachers of English need to reach the tough guys out there, and they are probably not going to do it by prescribing another go at The Sound and the Fury. The problem is not so much that tough guys lack the brainpower to read: they simply do not want to." I like the suggestions given for books to motivate adolescent male readers given in this article. I appreciate how Lawrence Baines has collected information over the years to share with us as teachers.

I always try to do an interest inventory with students and find books that fall into these interests to offer for independent reading time. I also love informational books that center around sports and life oddities, such as Ripley's or Guiness Book of World Records. Boys seem to like these types of books. I have used Sports Illustrated for Kids also as an offer for reading. For class books, I have used "The Air Down Here" by Gil Alicea, a teenage boy from the Bronx. It is written in journal format and tells about his life in his own words. I used this with 8th graders and the boys especially seemed to "grudgingly" get interested and want to read more! I also found that books about aliens, Big Foot, Sasquatch and those types of informational books were interesting to them as well!

When I was a media center teacher, I could not keep the Guinness or Ripley books on the shelf! I think besides the "ew" factor, another draw is (of course) the pictures, and small chunks of text.