Every so often I like to write about what I have read in the weekend papers. In looking back, I haven’t written a Weekend Papers post since October. Either we’ve been busy or I haven’t been prioritizing the paper. Either way, here are my latest picks.

Sharing E-Grief, Made Personal by Katherine Rosman. This piece is written by a friend of Lisa Adams who died last week from metastatic breast cancer. The author writes about all the people that Adams touched through her on-line writing before and during her illness. Like the people mentioned in the article, I was deeply saddened to read about Lisa’s death although I have never met her. I feel like I knew her through her writing. I could certainly write a lot of this topic as I think about it often. I can’t tell you how many times I have been saddened to learn of a death of a distant acquaintance’s pet through Facebook. Is this a good thing or not? My jury is still out on that one.

Accepted? Rejected? Relax by Frank Bruni. I was so glad to read this and then to hear Bruni interviewed about his new book, “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania.” We are not facing college admissions yet, thank goodness, but I only hope books and articles like these proliferate between now and then.

What My Friends Mean to Me by Iris Smlyes. This article pokes fun at our modern definition of friendship. I cringed a few times seeing myself in some of it’s line. Being a friend is hard work and reading this reminded me that I could be working a bit harder at the whole thing.

The New New Math by Tina Rosenberg. This article explores the School of One concept in which math instruction is individualized to students via a computer program. There are obvious cons to this idea but also many perks. I wonder about the possibility of something like this going large scale. If the Common Core/PARCC conversations have taught me anything, it’s that we are raising our children to succeed in a world truly different from the one we were prepared for. Looking at all options seems important and perhaps this is one to consider.

Lessons From a Traffic Light by Hans R. Agrawal. Agrawal describes his fascination with watching pedestrians approach the traffic light outside of his office window. Time and again, people will approach the light when the walk sign is on and not cross. Yet as soon as the don’t walk sign is illuminated, they will proceed to walk across the street. The author compares this behavior to similar decisions made by people who prefer a known danger to an unknown one. This was certainly an interesting thing to think about especially as I become more and more of a procrastinator the older I get.

I’d love to hear what you all are reading and enjoying. Do share!

Today I’m linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy’s Quick Lit. When Anne wrote that Quick Lit was coming up this weekend, I couldn’t believe it. While this month felt long in a lot of ways, it seems like I just collected my reads for last month’s Quick Lit. Anyway, here goes…

Blood Will Out by Walter Kim. When I read about titles that sound interesting, I record some of the titles on Goodreads. Others though I tend to get as samples on my Kindle. While scrolling through my samples, I stumbled upon Blood Will Out and liked it enough that I went on to purchase the book. The author tells the story of his unlikely friendship with a man who poses as Clark Rockefeller before finally being charged with murder. This is not the type of book that I usually read so it was fun to read it almost by mistake.

My Sunshine Away by M.O. Walsh.  My Sunshine Away is told from the perspective of a teenage boy who must process what happened when a neighborhood crush is raped. The story is compelling but becomes a bit repetitive toward the end. I felt like the story had promise but I did not love it.

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby. Many of the children’s lit blogger who I love raved about this book. They read advanced copies of this book and had such amazing things to say about it that I pre-ordered my copy. Somehow I missed the part about Bone Gap being magical realism which is too bad because I dislike magical realism nearly 100% of the time. The book had received such amazing reviews that I forged forward but Bone Gap is a not a title I will recommend very often.

“Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything else.”

-Plato

I think about the idea of ‘boy books’ and ‘girl books’ a lot so when I saw the article, “When Boys Can’t Like ‘Girl Books'” I sat down to read right away. In the article, multiple authors report times when librarians or school administrators invite only girls or only boys to their author talks depending on the type of book the author writes.  This is clearly disturbing on a number of levels including the fact as Kate Messner says, it teaches boys to de-value the voice of a woman author. I couldn’t agree more and think that everyone should come to hear all authors speak and learn from their experiences.

All that said, I have come to realize something. There are, in fact, for better or worse, girl books and boy books. When friends and blog readers approach me for children’s book recommendations, I am able to give them a list a mile long if their child is a girl. If their child is a boy, I break in to a cold sweat. I know that I will have a hard time coming up with a great list.  As a female reader and the mother of two girls, the honest truth is that we read primarily girl books in our house. We read books with female protagonists and we read mostly realistic fiction. Over time, I have learned that I have a very hard time recommending books to boys.

Of course I believe that it’s important to expose kids to all types of books and let them make their own decision. It’s why we have Jake Drake sitting next to Clementine and Roscoe Riley along side Violet Mackerel. In our house though, the truth is that the girls choose girl books. Katherine does so by looking at the picture on the cover and Caroline reads the jacket flap to see which characters will be getting the most air time. And nearly 100% of the time, they choose the realistic fiction title with the female protagonist.

Fortunately there are books that seem to cross lines for boys and girls alike. We have loved and know many ‘boy’ families who have adored the Humprhey series and obviously everyone loves Ramona, right? So of course, there are books that break the rules. But I do think sometimes it’s ok to acknowledge that there are books that are inherently more pleasing to girls and others that are just more fun reads for boys.

My goal is always to grow a reader; to make reading what a family chooses to do on what feels like the seventeenth snow day (see above). If that means talking about girl books and boy books as things that do exist, then I think maybe that’s ok. If I forced Katherine to branch out a bit from books with pink covers, she might stop reading all together and it would then be much harder to bring her back. If I insisted that Caroline explore fantasy or non-fiction, she would chose almost any activity other than reading that book.

So when I put books in to the hands of children, I am going to stick with recommending girl books to girls and boy books to boys. When they are ready, they will branch out. Maybe. And if they don’t they will be readers and hopefully they will read books full of characters who appreciate everyone for being just who they are.