MotherTalk Book Tour: The Dangerous Days of Daniel X

When I was a grad student studying children's literature, conversations abounded on the differences between the reading habits of boys and girls. Girls are more likely to read, I was told, and boys, when they do read, tend to prefer nonfiction over fiction. These statements in turn led to more conversations: why do girls seem to like to read, and boys don't? Why do girls read fiction and boys nonfiction? Why aren't there more books -- fiction and nonfiction alike -- marketed to young boys? Should we encourage boys to read more fiction? Is there some inherent worth in fiction? What, even, is the inherent worth in reading?

Good, good stuff. I could talk about reading and gender -- two favorite topics, really -- until kingdom come, and probably not run out of things to say. I was also dating someone at the time, coincidentally, and subjected him to my rehashed versions of all these conversations, asking him, as we talked, what his experiences had been with reading as a child.

He read the encyclopedia, I found out. (No big surprise there, that's the kind of guy he was.) He hated being read to in school because "they were always dumb books about prairies." But did you read Farmer Boy? I asked, slightly outraged at the diss on the Little House books. He hadn't. He hated the summer reading program at the library -- I nearly needed my smelling salts after that revelation -- because of more of the same: the books were all dumb, and apparently he didn't get credit for reading the encyclopedia. And -- this was the ultimate punch in the gut -- he read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but none of the rest of The Chronicles of Narnia, because he "didn't think the first book was all that interesting."

And yet, somehow, I married this guy.

So when I signed up to review The Dangerous Days of Daniel X by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, touted as "a vaccine for the 'boys don't like reading' epidemic," I did so with thoughts of all those conversations in grad school and then subsequently with my to-be husband. And when it became evident on page 4 that this clearly wasn't going to be my kind of book -- "fast-breeding creeps with burnt-looking metallic faces and deer horns bristling above hornet noses and stingers...very nasty sluglike things with jowls like water balloons about to burst...a host of human-skeletonish freaks with tentacle hair and green multifaceted fly eyes; some white chocolate-colored cretins that look like giant human babies, only with glowing television fuzz for their eyes and mouths; and a praying mantis-looking race with shrunken heads, long red dreadlocks, and a pathetic need to kill" -- I called in my backup, and handed the book to my husband.

"Read this," I said. "Give me the guy's perspective. Tell me if you would have liked it when you were a kid." He made the tiniest bit of a fuss, which I quickly quelled by reminding him that he just read Myrtle of Willendorf all of his own volition, and I can't even think of a book less targeted toward guys. "But I like archeology," he protested. "Read," I responded, handing him Daniel X. And he did.

The verdict? "Better than the prairie stories, definitely."

Would he have read it as a kid? "Maybe."

Better than the encyclopedia -- or at least a viable alternative? "No way."

Maybe there's something to this nonfiction thing after all....