My Bookish Crush

Every once in a while I read a book that causes me to have a "brain crush" on someone--it's not that I'm romantically attracted to them, but they are so brilliant that I'm reverent and filled with awe by them. Michael Sullivan, who wrote Connecting Boys with Books is one of these people, as is teen literature historian Michael Cart. But my biggest brain crush is on Dr. Leonard Sax, a medial doctor and psychologist whose work focuses on gender differences in children. As a lifelong feminist and very opinionated person, his books were a huge revelation to me. Boys Adrift talks about the five factors that are harming modern boys in their quest to grow up, and Why Gender Matters talks about the inherent differences between boys and girls and how we should honor these differences without stifling our kids. Sax's writing is chock full of statistics yet still manages to be interesting and very readable. These books changed my mind about single sex education, and completely changed the way I look at bottled water. If you have children or are interested in how children learn and grow, you might like to try Dr. Leonard Sax.