This timely and authoritative book provides a critique and deconstructs the myths that serve to uphold the current "moral panic" around boys' supposed failures in literacy and diminished chances of success. Readers are asked to look beyond simple gender binarism to see different, more complex and often more egregious categorizations of students in their classrooms, other than the simplistic male/female categories, and begin to question and address some of those issues: poverty, racism, violence, environment, and more complex issues of gender, patriarchy, and hegemony.

The authors suggest different ways of teaching literacies to both boys and girls and propose that while solutions are not simple, they are critically important in promoting positive educational experiences for all students, regardless of gender, class, culture, race, or sexual orientation.