Pages: 176 Price: $17.50 ISBN: 978-157110-425-0
When I was in fourth grade, I wrote a mildly violent story about two hardened criminals who break into the Michigan Space and Science Center, steal some moon rocks and other precious artifacts, and make their escape by commandeering a moon rover from one of the exhibits. The bulk of the narrative is devoted to a lengthy car chase with police, marked by lots of gun fighting, crazy stunt driving and general mayhem. Ultimately, it doesn't end well for the protagonists, who go out in a proverbial blaze of glory. Mrs. Shafer, my language arts teacher that year, indulged my fascination with action movie conventions by letting me write, illustrate and publish "The Hijacked Center" for a storybook-making project, and politely based her grading on my ability to write a coherent narrative, if not an entirely believable one. I'm still not sure where I got the idea that a moon rover could outrun a police cruiser, but it did make for some interesting illustrations.
In eighth grade, instead of forcing me to write ten decontextualized sentences to demonstrate my mastery of each week's vocabulary words, my English teacher Dr. Cameron gave me free rein to weave my new words into brief narrative sketches, most of which ended up substantially longer than ten sentences and featured plotlines borrowed from Stephen King and The Twilight Zone. I was lucky enough to have her for English again in ninth grade, where I had the opportunity to select any topic I desired for the end of the year research project. I chose to write about The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a decision Dr. Cameron supported with a smile and which resulted in one of my most self-actualizing writing experiences prior to college. I tracked down every reference to Rocky Horror that I could find in a decade's run of the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, and even had my first experience placing a special order at the local bookstore to obtain an out-of-print copy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show Book (Henkin, 1979). I went well beyond the minimum of five sources and handwrote the final copy of my research paper in my very first all-night writing frenzy, accompanied by the Rocky Horror audience participation album spinning on my turntable over and over again. I still have that paper, which was well-received incidentally, along with most of the short stories I wrote for Dr. Cameron, and I've never forgotten the lines she wrote in my yearbook: "When you're as famous as Stephen King, I'll say I remember him when…"
At the heart of Ralph Fletcher's Boy Writers: Reclaiming Their Voices lies the provocative notion that writing instruction isn't about teaching writing; it's about teaching writers, and upon this central premise Fletcher bases all of his ideas about how to nurture boys in the "dangerous, supervised sport" (p. 49) of writing. Some of my own teachers, like Mrs. Shafer and Dr. Cameron, seemed to have accepted that premise long ago, but reading Fletcher's book made me appreciate how progressive those teachers were, and, unfortunately, how atypical my formative experiences as a boy writer were. In contrast to Fletcher's popular Craft Lessons books, Boy Writers does not offer readers a nuts and bolts methods book of lesson plans and writing prompts. Rather, Fletcher aims for something more ambitious: a paradigm shift in the way we relate to young writers, boys in particular. While classroom teachers should find Fletcher's advice especially thought-provoking and useful, Boy Writers is written for a broader audience, including parents, teacher educators, literacy advocates and perhaps even policy makers and boys themselves, anyone with an interest in helping young men and boys become enthusiastic and expressive writers.
In a series of quick, concise chapters, Boy Writers covers a broad spectrum of issues revolving around boys' underachievement in and disengagement from writing, including teachers' frequent reluctance to embrace the kinds of writing that many boys are most eager to craft and the overly judgmental atmosphere that often pervades the writing classroom, with its meticulous focus on exact spelling, perfect mechanics and near-calligraphic handwriting. In advocating that teachers offer more opportunities for boys to write about topics and in genres of personal interest and that they spend more time collaborating closely with boys to discover what they're passionate about and how they've chosen to express those passions in their writing, Fletcher asks teachers to keep one question in mind at all times when conceiving writing assignments or activities, "will this serve my goal of creating lifelong writers?" (p. 166). While Boy Writers is firmly engaged with the mainstream of recent publications on boys and literacy (readers familiar with the literature will quickly recognize Fletcher's common cause with the work of Tom Newkirk, Michael Gurian, Jeff Wilhelm and Michael Smith), the emphasis Fletcher places on the power of choice, pleasure and close mentorship in fostering motivation to write results in a conceptual framework for writing instruction that should prove beneficial for all students.
Fletcher's determination to give his book "a boy flavor" (p. 7) by including a rich selection of anecdotes, interviews and samples of boys' writing makes for an engaging and personal read. Boy Writers is grounded in empirical research into boys' writing habits and motivations for writing (a useful home writing survey instrument is included as an appendix, and interview transcripts throughout model a protocol for talking with students about writing), although literacy researchers looking for guidance in studying boys' writing may be frustrated that Fletcher does not lay out his methods and data more explicitly. However, as Fletcher notes early on, "the issue feels abstract until you start thinking in terms of actual boys and their experiences expressing themselves through written words," (p. 14) and by privileging the words and images of actual boys throughout the book, Fletcher succeeds in reclaiming boys' voices for educators to hear. As a former boy writer, I appreciated Fletcher's validation of the approaches taken by the teachers who created memorably engaging environments for me to explore and lay claim to my own writing voice. As a current teacher educator, I am glad that Fletcher has not only added his powerful voice to the chorus advocating for more student-centered literacy instruction, but more importantly that he has also provided in Boy Writers a principled way to think about how to transform classrooms to achieve that end.
References
Henkin, B. (1979). The Rocky Horror Picture Show book. New York: Plume.
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