Alec Greven

School is hard! There's a lot to know, like where to sit on the bus, how to find your way around the halls, and what to do to make sure you stay on your teacher's good side. Lucky for you Alec Greven has just turned eleven, and he's seen it all. Alec passes down his sixth-grade wisdom and gives advice that will help every student who's starting out or just started out on the wrong foot. This book was funny because it was from the point of view of a boy who is starting sixth grade and he thinks he knows everything. As we all know no one, especially sixth graders, do not know everything, so it is funny that the character in the book thinks he does know everything and makes it seem like he does.… (més)

I hated this less than I (frankly) wanted to. There's some reasonably sound advice here (don't be a big show-off; be friendly and don't say anything mean), and some of the advice is downright strange, coming out of an elementary school: "Girls always like the smart boys. ... If you are the smartest kid in the class, you are like a magnet and girls are the metal."

But the good and strange are both mixed with some strangely misogynistic ideas--strange because they're (ostensibly) coming from an 8-year-old but aren't "make sure your cootie shots are up to date." Things like "About 73% of regular girls ditch boys; 98% of pretty girls ditch boys," a statistic he says at the beginning is based on observation on his school playground. The anti-pretty-girl propaganda continues: "Many boys go for the pretty girls. It is easy to spot pretty girls because they have the big earrings, fancy dresses, and all the jewelry. Use caution! ... The best choice for most boys is a regular girl. Remember, some pretty girls are coldhearted when it comes to boys." A few things here: first, we're apparently confusing "pretty" with "rich." Second, combined with his earlier "statistics," there's an implication that boys should go after the plain girls, because they're desperate enough that they can't be picky.

Overall, there's an odd vibe to this book, one that implies that girls exist to be won over by boys. Granted, the kid wrote this when he was 8, but still, this title goes out of its way to present girls as alien beings with no interests besides lording their power over boys. (And we girls apparently do have power, because "girls win most of the arguments and have most of the power. If you know that now, things might be easier." Because we are all shrieking harridans, I guess.)

I don't mean to sound like I'm calling a nine-year-old out on his unevolved gender views. I disagree with a lot of the advice and the concept of this book as a whole. I'm more curious why HarperCollins would publish this how-to-bag-a-girl title, and why Ellen DeGeneres (of all people!) made that happen. The idea that elementary-schoolers need a how-to on attracting mates doesn't sit well with me, and that this how-to is filled with such "it's okay, girls really ARE incomprehensible and mean" messages sits doubly poorly. If we're going to give our kids dating guides, shouldn't we be steering them toward more gender-balanced viewpoints?
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