Hi folks. My name is Ian Wilson, and I am the author and publisher of a series of railway history books. These describe steam operations in Ontario, Canada during the 1950s. You can learn more about them from our website or our blog.
My wife Mary-Jo and I are self-employed with our publishing business, and we homeschool our two sons aged nine and seven.
Why this blog? For two reasons. One, to share ideas with other parents or grandparents who are seeking good reading material for boys in the 8 to 14-year-old range. During numerous visits to public libraries and bookstores, I have observed multitudes of series of books devoted to girl readers. For boys, a lot of the recent offerings deal with what I consider to be strange or questionable subject matter. Thus, in the search for titles to read to our sons, I have been regularly purchasing used copies of books written anywhere from 40 to 70 years ago.
Secondly, this blog will be used to update readers on the status of my first in a series of adventure books, to be released in the autumn of 2010. The title of this volume will be The Secret of the Old Swing Bridge.
I mentioned that we read series' of old books. Some of our favorites are the early Hardy Boys (anything published before about 1960, when they went to the blue covers). We really enjoy Stephen Meader's adventure books. The Mel Martin series of baseball stories by John R. Cooper are great. Also a Canadian author by the name of Jack Hambleton, wrote a number of wonderful books for boys in the 1940s and 1950s set in Ontario and the Canadian North.
If you are a parent, grandparent, teacher, etc. of boys in the 8 to 14-year-old range, and any of the above interests you, then please respond with a comment!
I also recommend the early science fiction Tom Swift books... and even the Tom Swift Jr books of 1954 to 1971 are not bad... though more formulaic in construction than the earlier books (which were printed from 1910 to 1941 and which developed the characters from book to book). These books inspired several generations of scientists and engineers (as opposed to hoggers!), and while many of the incredible inventions developed in the books are now old hat, or have long since been surpassed by modern electronic gizmos, the "future" of yesteryear can be a never ending source of amusement and dialog on how our society has come to be.
ReplyDeleteVince Veness