Why These Books?

My older guy (Andrew-14) likes to read fiction and has gotten into books by several different authors.  He just finished, Lockdown, from Alexander Gordon Smith, the very talented and young author of the Escape from Furnace series.

 So, when asking my boy, what he really liked about Lockdown, well, Mr. 97 GPA and 98 in English told me this, ‘’I don’t know.’’ Then when I goaded him a little, guess what he told me then, ‘’I don’t know.’’  So, in my typical, slightly sarcastic fashion, I start to tease him a little and said, ‘’ geez, ok, thanks Andrew, whattya gonna say next, ‘’ok, dad, really, need to know, it was a great read, a roller coaster, ride, I laughed I cried, it just had a darn good plot, and what a theme, what a theme! It was just a nifty read.’’

‘’Ouhgggh! You’re killin me buddy,’’  is what I said next.  I told him this was for my blog and he just smiled. Don’t think he cares. The thing is about Andrew is that he’s a great kid, truly, well, most of the timeJ I knew that eventually he’d feel bad about blowing me off.  And, I was right.  He finally offered, in a tone coated with honesty, Lockdown was incredibly dark and descriptive and he felt attached to the main character right away, ‘’it was real.’’     

I thanked him and then he escaped. 

Actually, I have to admit, I’m exaggerating a little about Andrew’s reluctance to talk about what he’s reading.  We do talk a lot about the stuff that he reads because I read a lot of it too. I just think I caught him when he just wanted to tune everything out.  There is some truly incredible YA fiction out there, though.  Also, I can tell you that he finds out about a lot of these books either from his friends or his librarian at school.

-Jim