I’ve been collecting books for research recently. Some of them I already had on hand, but this is a good excuse to acquire others. Books I remember well from childhood, that I loved and that helped shape me into who I am. That’s not what this project is about, wholly, although in part it is. You see, I was a tomboy. These days, that comes with a lot of baggage. Back then, I preferred the ‘boy’s books’ to read and set me dreaming of things I would do. And I did a lot of them, too. Search and rescue, hunting and fishing, becoming a scientist, and much more. Then I became a mother of a son, and to my dismay realized that the books in the library were largely targeted at my daughters, and not all of my daughters. They were, as I’d put it when I was a tomboy in my jeans with the knees out and scabs to earn those holes, for girly-girls. Nothing wrong with that, in theory. Problem is when there’s nothing else.
So, I’ve been piling up books for boys from generations past, to mine for boyishness and take the nuggets I pan out of them to melt into something for the boys of today. The rough-and-tumble boys. The boys whose hearts yearn for space, and exploration, and dinosaurs in some strange frontier somewhere. The boys who will be engineers, and divers, and work with their hands at jobs that leave them filthy when they stumble home at night to shower in the garage before the wife will feed them a hearty supper.
Those boys. The ones who will grow into the men we call heroes. The boys who desperately need noble masculinity modeled for them in stories. I may be a girl, but I grew up a tomboy, and with the help of old friends, I’m going to try my hand at telling some of those stories.
I have some Tom Swift, and Tom Swift Jr (which is very different than the original) to read again. I have Tarzan books and many others by ER Burroughs, as he was a favorite when I was younger. Jim Kjelgaard’s dog books still resonate, as I learned when I introduced them to my son. Danny Dunn and Encylopedia Brown helped feed my lifelong desire to be a scientist. Talking to friends reminded me of The Mad Scientist’s Club, and The Great Brain. Others I picked up for the delight of the title – who could resist Tom Stetson and the Giant Jungle Ants? or the appeal of nostalgia, with the Lone Ranger (although having grown up without television, I haven’t seen the show).
These books are a representation of generations lost to time. Tom Swift’s debut was in 1910 and none remain who read the first editions as boys turning over the crisp new leaves eagerly. Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster (a Tom Swift Jr book) came out in 1954, a couple of years before my father was born. Tom Stetson and his ants debuted in 1948. The men who were nurtured by these stories, which entertained and influenced them, did great things that saw a man step onto the moon.
After that first wave, came the next generations. The Mad Scientist’s Club which appeared as a collection in the 1960s had been serialized in Boy’s Life. Encyclopedia Brown and The Great Brain came along in the same decade. It’s not that there were no more boy’s books after that. There were, and I’m sure you will tell me about them in the comments. It’s that the culture started to change. Exploration, with all of it’s risks, became a fearful thing instead of eagerly anticipated. Kids weren’t given the freedom to roam a neighborhood solving mysteries and building strange contraptions.
Which is a pity. Boys need freedom enough to learn and grow and become competent, independent thinkers. Books can help them with the thinking. Books can spark ideas in them of what they can do with their hands, and in time their lives, and that can give them meaning and purpose, which they desperately need if they are going to be happy human beings. And all of this should be fun.
Mad Genius Club 
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