Michael Vey and Marketing

A few weeks ago, my ten-year-old came home from school and asked to go the library right away. This is not normal. I'm all for going to the library, though, so we went. It turned out that he'd gone to an assembly at school about the Michael Vey book. Mind you, this is a book I'd been trying to get him to read for a while. "Oh," I said. "Did Richard Paul Evans come to your school?"

"No," my son answered. "It was somebody talking about how great the Michael Vey book is. It's going to be bigger than Harry Potter."

My son put the book on hold, received it within a week, and read it all the way through within a few days. This is a kid who doesn't like to read fiction. Now he's reading the sequel.

As an author, I just have to wonder how Richard Paul Evans thinks this is okay. I mean, as far as I know, he didn't even go to the assembly. As a parent, on the other hand, I'm all for this type of marketing. Whatever gets my boy to read is good.

I've noticed that literacy for boys is all about marketing. Unlike my daughter, who reads all sorts of stuff, the boys usually only read what all the other boys are reading. It has to have a cool cover and be popular.

So what do you think about schools advertising books to children? And, if you have boys in your life, what are they reading?