Title: Misreading masculinity : boys, literacy, and popular culture /
Authors: Newkirk, Thomas
Publisher: Heinemann,
Year: 2002
Subjects: Boys Education (Elementary) Social aspects United States.; Language arts (Elementary) Social aspects United States.; Masculinity in popular culture United States.; Violence in popular culture United States.
Abstract: Tom Newkirk takes an up-close look at elementary boys and their relationship to sports, movies, video games, and other venues of popular culture. He sees these media not as enemies of literacy, but as resources for literacy. Through a series of interviews, Newkirk listens to young boys, and girls, who describe the pleasure they take in popular culture and explain the ways in which they use visual narratives in their writing. Combining memoir, research project, cultural analysis, and critique of published findings, Newkirk encourages schools to ask questions about what counts as literacy in boys. He makes the case that if we want boys to join "the literacy club, " then we have to invite them in with genres of their own choosing.
Contents: The "crisis" in boyhood -- Making sense of the gender gap -- The case against literacy : a respectful meditation on resistance -- Taste and distaste -- Violence and innocence -- Misreading violence -- Making way for captain underpants : a chapter in three acts -- A big enough room.