Classes don't start for at least 25 minutes, but the library is already jam-packed with kids, mostly boys. Students are sitting at tables, browsing bookshelves, standing and chatting. Three untamed games of chess are going full tilt, and a long line has formed in front of the circulation desk. There are so many students I have to stand up to make sure no one is running around the paperback racks playing tag. "Mrs. Cox, can you help me find that blue book I was using yesterday?" "Mrs. Cox, did the Simpsons book come in?" "Mrs. Cox, how do you log onto the computer?" "Hi, Mrs. Cock!" (There's one in every crowd.) "Mrs. Cox, what did you say the password was again?" "Mrs. Cox, Mrs. Cox, Mrs. Cox…." Welcome to the Hamilton Middle School Library. Three days a week before school begins, our library is stuffed with about 70 students who come from the nearby low-income neighborhoods of North Long Beach, CA. The place is loud, busy, and focused—and it's full of guys. But things weren't always that way.

It's not stuffy to be a scholar

When I arrived four years ago, not many kids were rushing to the library. Who could blame them? Although there was a new circulation desk and a bank of 16 student computers, almost everything was dirty and disorganized. Storage rooms were crammed with old junk, some of which had probably been around since the school opened in 1950, and most of the collection was in sad shape. New books were kept in a separate place for teachers only. And the room itself was ugly—one big unimaginative square with a 50-foot wall that housed four heaters and two air conditioners. Overall, the library looked like it belonged in a neighborhood that had low expectations because it didn't see an alternative. How do you transform a down-on-its-luck library into an irresistible place for boys? It begins with vision, energy, and a lot of hard work. Based on my 30-plus years of experience working with students, I know boys respond well to a scholarly environment. In fact, it's one of the ways librarians can encourage them to seek higher education and become lifelong learners. So in addition to the hundreds of hours spent scrubbing, sorting, and ruthlessly tossing out tons of junk, I made sure that our library also offered comfortable places to sit and read, places for privacy and quiet, and a large, beautiful wall mural. Many adults say that boys are too rough and don't value these things. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you give boys the best and teach them how to take care of things, they respect their environment and begin to value themselves. The media center is a place where students ask questions, generate ideas, and learn to think. And since boys "see" with their hands, as well as with their eyes, it's the perfect place for chess sets and other objects that inspire curiosity, like gyroscopes, 3-D puzzles, and kaleidoscopes. These imaginative items can give boys something to do while they're waiting in the checkout line and they may be a springboard for starting a conversation. In short, they make reluctant readers and nonreaders feel like the library is a place for them, too. Think of your library as a place to market reading material. Boys like to get to the point, so carve out small sections (like a "Guys Read" section) with large boy-friendly signs. It makes choosing a book much easier for a reluctant or emerging reader who may feel overwhelmed by too many choices. To make shelving easier, use the name of a genre as the first part of a call number to identify books in the digital catalog and mark the books with color-coded labels. Whether or not you approve of graphic novels, comics, pop-ups, 3-D illusions, and jokes, the bottom line is that boys are crazy about them, so make sure you stock them in your library. Add to the list the gross and the gory, the horrific, toilet humor, and action-packed adventures, like Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games (Scholastic, 2008). You'll also need short stories, comics, sports, and world records, as well as titles on drawing and calligraphy, origami, and paper airplanes. And don't forget biographies of wrestlers and evil rulers, and titles on gangs and the military. For a select group of kids, other must-haves include series books, with a healthy mix of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror. Our students are huge fans of Jeff Kinney's "Wimpy Kid" series (Amulet), Art Spiegelman's Maus (Knopf, 1986), Iain Lawrence's B for Buster (Delacorte, 2004), and Gordon Korman's Born to Rock (Perfection Learning, 2008). (For more recommendations, check out Jon Scieszka's "Guys Read" website and Michael Sullivan's latest book, Serving Boys Through Readers' Advisory [ALA, 2009].)

Ready for some action?

When it comes to active young boys, noise and energy are part of the package. So why do we make them sit at desks six hours each day or learn from textbooks when hands-on application and movement are how they learn best? Here are some activities that are bound to be big hits with your boys... Chess. If you do nothing else, provide chess sets. You can buy standard tournament sets with rubber roll-up boards for around $6 each and store the pieces in large Ziploc bags. After years of picking up stray pieces and losing parts, I finally color-coded the bottom of each piece, slapped a barcode on each bag, and wrote the number 32 on every set with a permanent marker. Now, boys who check one out know I'll charge them 25 cents for every stray piece I find. It may not sound like a lot, but it only takes one or two times of being fined, and my cleanup problems are over. If you want to get fancy, try offering a chess institute. Set aside a Saturday, with training in the morning, a buffet-style lunch, and a tournament in the afternoon. Invite another school to the event to make it even more exciting. Don't be surprised if you have to shove the boys out the door when it's over. Even after six hours, they'll still want to keep playing. Library club. It's an ideal place for students to generate ideas and help make policy decisions—two important contributions that extend the sense of ownership throughout the entire school and let kids know that the way you operate is student friendly. I let our students determine how many books could be checked out and for how long. I also encouraged them to redesign an application for students who want to check out additional books. The application requires kids to consider how they will take care of books, which was my biggest concern. Our club members took the lengthy form I'd written and cut it down to one efficient, streamlined page—a major improvement. Many school clubs have mandatory attendance and a set group of students. But who wants to chase kids? Our library club is less structured. There's a consistent day we meet (Tuesday) and time (before school). Other than that, students come and go as they please, and when too many new members show up, we tell them to come back in a month. A core group always ends up running things, and there's a fringe group that we put to work as needed. This is the first year at Hamilton that my core group is half girls; usually, it's mainly boys. Bug club. While the entire school loved this one, it soon became clear that boys were mostly interested in spiders that devoured bugs. Students purchased containers, caught spiders, and fed them each day with flies and crickets that they caught themselves. We quickly morphed into an arachnid club, with a donated tarantula, several wolf spiders, and a tunnel spider. I insisted that the black widow be displayed in alcohol. The praying mantids were a hit, too, and we watched some caterpillars become moths. We relied mostly on donations and insects that students found on their own. When I got tired of the bugs and found myself bringing in food supplies, we released them into the wild. And, with parental permission, I allowed one child to take the tarantula home. Reading contests. I once read about a library in Pennsylvania that ran a Read-A-Thon, which is like a marathon except students read for as long as they can. Students were allowed to bring stuffed toys, pillows, and blankets to that library, and they were served snacks. The librarians were astounded that more than 90 percent of the participants completed the Read-A-Thon. So I decided to try it myself—and it worked! Our reluctant readers read for six hours without talking. We upped it to seven, then eight. More than 95 percent of the participants continued to complete the contest, which resulted in a raffle for prizes, including home computers. Although the event was a huge success, the problem was me. I don't like to do the same things over and over, and I have to admit, the Read-A-Thon was a lot of work. Enter the Read-O-Rama. It's a three-week, schoolwide version of the Read-A-Thon. But instead of keeping track of the amount of time one reads, you count pages. And instead of taking place solely in the library, it can take place everywhere—in classrooms, homes, and the library, too. Rather than spend money on prizes, we held an assembly for the top 500 participants (almost half of the student body), in which the principal, staff, and various teachers performed (or humiliated themselves) for our students. Students compete against students; classes compete against classes; and grades compete against grades to see who reads the most pages. Students also challenge staff. Simple forms allow participants to record everything they read. Large thermometer charts in each building record the grade-level progress. Giant banners painted on butcher paper decorate the halls and promote the program. Computer-generated lists keep individuals and teachers apprised of their standing. Guess who came up with this wonderful idea? That's right, our library club. For our first year, our principal, who has a background in opera, dressed as a diva and sang opera, and library club members made their own versions of Cat in the Hat hats. Last year, they transformed themselves into the Hamilton Harleys, and we had a motorcycle parade, complete with cops, a vice-principal and a teacher on scooters, two high-school students in tricked-out bikes, and our senior PE teacher on her Harley! Homemade videos and DVDs. Trust me, library orientations can get old really fast, especially when you have more than 30 English classes and it takes two orientations per class to cover the basics. To preserve my sanity and make sure everyone fully understood all of the important things they needed to know, I recruited some high school students, middle school teacher aides (who happened to be boys, of course), and my daughter (who owns an IMac) to create an orientation video. Once I gave them some props, a list of essential things to cover, and showed them how to use my video camera, the kids ended up stealing the show by adding adolescent humor, relevant analogies to current teen issues, and music. Orientation videos are unusual and fun, and they hold students' interest. Plus, they're far from polished, which is part of their appeal. Best of all, they cover all the rules and regs as only teens can do: by breaking every single one of them! Mock battles illustrate why you don't play around in the library and how to take care of the furniture and share materials. Thanks to that video, every class got a complete tour of the library and our circulation increased. And all of the books that appeared in the video were checked out repeatedly for months.

It's all about attitude

There are probably gentler ways to say this, but I don't want to waste your time while I circle around the truth. If your library isn't a boy magnet, you need to check your attitude. Do you really want boys in your library? Those chess games they love aren't quiet one-on-one games. They're a noisy team effort, with suggestions, arguments, challenges, and audiences. I tell them, just keep it to a low roar. And the game isn't over when boys leave the library—they continue to debate certain moves and talk up their next match. Do you smile and welcome boys with genuine warmth when they enter? The surprised look on their faces alone makes it worth it. Many boys are fearful and insecure most of the time. It's hard to be a boy these days. They're creatures of impulse and are rarely spiteful. Do you use empathy and negotiation? What worked with my daughter when she was four years old works with middle school boys: give them two appropriate choices. And just say no if they ask if they can do something other than the two choices that were offered. It's all about accepting boys based on what we already know about how they think (or not). Do you give unconditional love? The older I get, the easier it is to imagine myself as their mother (or grandmother). Boys are accountable for their actions, but I don't take it personally when they jump over the couch or giggle about my last name. Discipline should be used to provide structure, not punishment, so five-minute time-outs still work. Teachers who dislike many or most of their students ought to resign; they do more harm than good. Do you laugh at their jokes? Christian, a sixth grader, burst into the library one day with his own joke: "Mrs. Cox, you are in trouble with me today. Give me your books and stick up your bookmarks!" Trying to joke boys out of inappropriate behaviors goes much further than venting frustration or responding with condescending admonishment. Sixth-grader Reggie, who suffers from ADHD and a lack of impulse control, became visibly relaxed when I took him lightly by the shoulders and without squeezing, moved his arms back and forth while I asked if his dad ever wanted to strangle him. (Yeah, I know. Never touch a student.) Gentle teasing is more effective than punishment. Try the Jekyll and Hyde approach. I learned this from working with a teacher who lashed out at the class one moment and then beckoned the most unlovable student in the class to sit by her while she showered him with attention and talked to him like he was her son. That class never knew what was coming next, and it kept them on their toes. I don't have the personality or wit to do this with a whole class, but I've taught myself to follow any loud or angry voice with a sudden change in tone, to absolute calm or gushy sweetness. It communicates to students that you're unflappable and in full control of your emotions. During the morning madness, if I see two boys playing tag, I stand up and pro-ject in my deepest voice: "Boys! Stop it!" They're all guilty of something, whether now or earlier, and whether I see it or not, so they all look up. I smile and go about my business like nothing happened. Consistent expectations. It speaks for itself. It's not about you. There are librarians out there who don't approve of graphic novels in their collections. I had to lobby in our district for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender books. I read a lot of current adolescent literature, partly to get district approval and partly to stay in tune. Many curriculum experts and English textbooks are at least 20 years behind the times. And many educators still tout the stuff they loved as kids and ignore the rich and wonderful cutting-edge literature that teens gobble up today. The payoff If you put these suggestions into action, you'll have more boys than you know what to do with—and girls, too! Last year it took a while for girls to start coming to the library on their own. One girl would stick her head in and say, "Why are there all boys here?" and leave. The braver ones finally started coming with groups of girlfriends, and now we have a friendly mix. Some days I can barely keep up with checkout, and unbeknownst to the kids, they're not supervised at all. When the bell rings and they race off to class, I look around the library in amazement. It still stands! Not only that, but it's not even trashed. Sure, there may be a few books on the tables or one or two shelves in disarray—even a paper or two on the floor; but considering how many students were just in here with little 'ol me, that's great!

---

Helen Cox's (u2helen@msn.com) previous library at Lindbergh Middle School in Long Beach, CA, won SLJ's 2002 Giant Step Award, as the nation's most improved media center.