Today I'm delighted to bring to you another guest post, this one from author Jackson Keene, on books for boy readers. He has combined genres in his novel NOLICHUCK! TJ'S WILD FRONTIER ADVENTURE, and it sounds like Jackson's truly hit the mark.
If you are interested in appealing to boy readers, also check out my guest post from Andy Sherrod in addition to Andy's blog.
Here's Jackson:
It’s been my experience––both as an avid reader in my own
youth as well as what I know about middle-graders and high school male readers
of today––that guys in general are just as demanding, detailed, and devoted
bookworms as the girls. We just
like different kinds of reading.
Most boys and men like action and adventure. Loads of it. Preferably with shooting, fighting, and necessary fatalities
to the bad guys. But without being
gratuitous or gory. Plot twists,
intrigue, subtleties, and a little romance are fine, too, with a greater amount
of amorousness allowed for the more mature.
But as a group, males devour strong action. And we also like to see the underdog
win. Overcome overwhelming odds. The truth is, ordinary
guys who wind up doing extraordinary things are more appealing to many of us than
reading about superheroes that are always expected to come out on top.
This is exactly what I’ve attempted to do in NOLICHUCK.
What I’ve also done is written a tale that combines
historical fiction with contemporary fiction: A lot of adventure and a touch of young romance in the
distant past, followed by continuing big adventure and a little love in the
present. Not so much amorousness
that it turns off the pre-teen and teen male reader.
Our hero, TJ, is
just an ordinary fourteen year old kid with extraordinary problems at home and
school: A broken up family from his parents’ bitter divorce, evil bullies
almost every afternoon, failing grades, boring classes, snobby girls, mean
teachers, cut from basketball tryouts, few friends.
Life is rough for
him. His confidence is below
ground level, and his courage is suspect.
And then that
mysterious little green book had to go and throw him into the past. And
not just any past, but into the untamed forbidding forests of 1802 eastern
Tennessee along with the savage Indians, wild beasts, bloodthirsty robbers,
backwoods ruffians, and log cabin living! Yup, it’s definitely not 2011
Knoxville anymore.
And he thought
his present life was bad news! But TJ’s adventures are only beginning.
Along the way, he fights off killer beasts and bandits and braves, meets the
young Davy Crockett, gains a world of confidence in himself, finds his first
real love, and is befriended by a fantastic frontier family who really has it
together.
When he returns
to the present, he’s a brand new person––but there're killers loose in his
house, bullies waiting to beat him up at school, a pretty new girl at Highland
High he's hasn't even seen yet. And the aftermath of the little green
book to deal with!
Links to Nolichuck:
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