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Although the Tiger’s Choice, the PaperTigers’ online reading group, selects books that are written for children but can be enjoyed by adults as well, National Reading Group Month has brought to mind those books written for adults that younger readers might adopt as their own favorites, and that could launch impassioned discussions between parents and children, teachers and students, or older and younger siblings.

The books on this week’s list are books recommended for teenagers, with content that may be beyond the emotional grasp of pre-adolescents. All of them are available in paperback and in libraries.

1) Ricochet River by Robin Cody (Stuck in a small Oregon town, two teenagers find their world becomes larger and more complex when they become friends with Jesse, a Native American high school sports star.)

2) The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle (Alice is twelve, growing up on a modern-day Wyoming ranch with a mother who rarely leaves her bed, a father who is haunted by the memory of Alice’s rebellious and gifted older sister who ran off with a rodeo rider, and an overly active imagination.)

3) Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod by Gary Paulsen (The author of Hatchet tells the true story of how he raced a team of huskies across more than 1000 miles of Arctic Alaska in what Alaskans call The Last Great Race.)

4) Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (This autobiography of a young girl growing up in revolutionary Iran and told in the form of a graphic novel is rich, original, and unforgettable.)

5) From the Land of Green Ghosts by Pascal Khoo Thwe (An amazing odyssey of a boy from the jungles of Burma who became a political exile and a Cambridge scholar, this Kiriyama Prize winner is a novelistic account of a life filled with adventures and extraordinary accomplishments.)

6) In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez (The Mirabal sisters were beautiful, gifted, and valiant women who were murdered by the Dominican Republic government that they were committed to overthrow. Their true story is given gripping and moving life by their compatriot, Julia Alvarez.)

As the weather becomes colder and the days grow shorter, find your favorite teenager, choose a book, and plunge into the grand adventure of reading and sharing!

When a man recently went to a bookstore in search of his book group’s latest selection, he never dreamed that a clerk would question who the book was for, nor did he expect an unsolicited analysis of his character. Yet that’s what happened to one purchaser of Aryn Kyle’s novel, The God of Animals, when the woman who waited on him asked who he was buying the book for, and when learning it was for the customer himself, informed him that men who read “women’s fiction” were “sensitive.”

The customer was understandably unsettled by this encounter, which he later discussed on National Public Radio’s program, The Bryant Park Project. As a bookseller for many years, and as a parent of two sons, I’m perplexed and unsettled by this story as well, on a couple of different levels.

Even if we ignore the fact that The God of Animals is an amazing novel about the modern-day American West, in which one of the central relationships is that between a father and daughter, and is a book that should never be limited to readers of only one gender, the assumption that there are “men’s books” and “women’s books” and never the twain shall meet is one that is alien to any bookstore I have ever known. Yet at the same time, as a children’s bookseller, I often heard, and have espoused myself, the point of view that “girls will read books about boys but boys will rarely read books about girls.”

There are of course exceptions–I’ve yet to find any child who will not devour Roald Dahl’s Matilda and Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass trilogy seems to have met few gender-based barriers. Yet I’ve learned from bitter experience that offering a boy Harriet the Spy or my all-time favorite Mistress Masham’s Repose often will evoke the disappointed response, “Oh, it’s about a girl.”

When my sons were small, they loved the adventures of Dorothy in the land of Oz and Alice whether she was in Wonderland or through the looking glass as much as they did Peter Pan or Rat, Mole and Toad in The Wind in the Willows. And certainly Marjorie’s Brothers One and Two seem to enjoy books about females as well as males.

So when and how does this divergence in taste occur? Or do we just assume that it will occur and turn it into a self-fulfilling prophesy? In your experience, do boys avoid books in which girls take the leading role? If so, how can we broaden that point of view? And what would have become of J.K Rowling if she had written about Harriet Potter?

So one of my upcoming picture books, Abigail Spells, is a story about a bird (featured here) who likes to spell, and enters a spelling bee. In the interest of accuracy, I am researching spelling bees; appropriate words for different age levels (state literacy standards), procedures, etc. There is a lot of information online, and I've already interviewed my teacher friends, but I thought maybe all you great teachers, librarians, parents, and former spelling champs out there reading our blog might have some first hand experience you'd be willing to share.

I am especially interested in spelling bees held for young kids (1st and/or 2nd graders), and ones at schools, though I know that is not the only place they are held. Here is what I'd like to know:

-At what age/grade do kids switch from phonetic, or sounded-out spelling, to standard spelling? When do teachers start correcting the spelling on their homework? I know this is a very individual thing, I've gotten answers from anywhere from Kindergarden to 2nd grade... what has been your experience?

-Has anyone out there been to a spelling bee in recent past, or had one at your school? If so, which grades participated? Was it part of the curriculum, or an after school/enrichment type of thing?

-I've been looking at word lists for spelling bees (by grade) online, is there a good resource for this that you know of? I've heard the "four blocks" literacy model is a standard one.... but I'd love to know of more!

Thanks in advance for your help, little future spellers will thank you!