the Village Knittiot

When I was a kid, the boys in our neighborhood got together one summer and built their own fort. Up until this point, we had all played and worked together harmoniously as a group. We had even managed to completely transform this area around a large old tree into a comfortable somewhat fort-like structure. It hadn’t required any hammering or building materials, we just used the landscape and environment to naturally provide shelter and doorways and room partitions. We all brought items from home or that we found to add to it and there was much playing and climbing and having fun. So, when they erected this monstrosity on the side of our favorite sledding hill, it felt like a bit of an affront. In a scene like something from an old movie, they even took a piece of paper and wrote “Boys Only” in their very awful little boy handwriting and tacked it to the front door.

In no way did I understand this action, and so I did what anyone would do. I cracked the combination for the lock they had put on the door and went in to have a look around. Sitting there in the middle of the floor was a bucket of paint, which I can only assume they were going to use to spruce the place up — and boy did it need it. The place looked just awful. How could this possibly be better than our tree fort? Feeling a spurt of resentment, I opened the lid on the paint bucket and turned it over on its side, leaking paint all over the floor of their fort, little hoodlum that I am.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you they were angry. But so was I. Here we had spent all summer working together and then they just went off and with a few boards and nails managed to shut me out. Well, my anger only lasted a moment and then I felt a bit sick. Of course they discovered it was me. I don’t remember how, probably I did something stupid like step in the paint and then walk home leaving a trail of footprints right to my front door. My mother suggested that I bake them brownies to make up for my bad deed. I thought that didn’t sound like it would work, but I was pretty desperate at that point and was ready to try anything. This is how I learned to apologize, and unlike my girlfriends, who I would discover over the years continually punished one over and over again for even the most minor of transgressions, when the guys heard me say I was sorry and had the chance to tell me how lame it was that I did that to their fort, they each took a brownie and it was over. I like boys.

In July when Mr. Knittiot and I visited Philadelphia to see if it was our kind of town or not, we stopped by this great bookstore. To me, the hallmark of a town that I can live in is the presence of a bookstore precisely and only for younger readers. Philadelphia, fortunately, has one of those and there, on a bookshelf I found a collection of writings from some of my favorite authors of all time called Guys Write for Guys Read which turned out to be a bunch of short pieces written by various children’s authors and illustrators on, well, being a guy. Some of the contributors (and this is a paltry sampling) include M.T. Anderson (who wrote the brilliant book called Feed, which I am in the middle of right now), Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl), Neil Gaiman (who forever changed comic books for me), Daniel Handler (who is as funny in person as you would think), James Howe, Brian Jacques, Walter Dean Myers, Christopher Paolini, Daniel Pinkwater, and so many many more.

The book was compiled by Jon Scieszka and all the proceeds go to his organization called Guys Read, a literacy organization which he started in order to generate and celebrate reading enthusiasm amongst guys of all ages (though particularly kids and young adults). When we got back, I requested the book from the library and last week it came in. I spent much of the weekend making my way through several of the entries, many of which I had to read outloud to my husband because they were the kind of hillarious you feel the need to share with someone else. We were both laughing so hard at points that I thought I was going to pee my pants.

I think the best one so far — and I’m still only in the H’s (the book is alphabetical by author) — is called The Follower by Jack Gantos, which you can read if you go to the website and click on Adults, then Help Guys Read, then Jack Gantos. The website is done in flash, so I am having trouble figuring out how to link directly to it, which I suppose is a good thing if you want people to roam around your site, but mildly irritating if you just want to link to something.

So, if you get a chance, check it out. Better yet, if you know a young guy pick up a copy for him. Then do him the favor of reading him The Follower and watch as even the most non-reading kid gets interested in reading. The best part is that each author has a selected bibliography after their name, so if the guy likes what the author said, he can go to his local library or bookstore and request something.

On a final not, if I hadn’t got this book, I might never have discovered that there is a book out there called The Day My Butt Went Psycho — which, you have to admit, would be pretty sad for a girl who owns all the Captain Underpants books and goes by the name of Loopy Stinkerchunks in some circles…

This entry was posted on Monday, September 12th, 2005 at 6:23 am and is filed under this Reading Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.