In our earlier blog post Brilliant Bob children’s books teach boys positive masculinity, we wrote about Ken Jolivet’s book series about an 8-year-old boy who learns lessons from his dad and other male role models. In this post, we feature a video of a reading of one of those books — Brilliant Bob is Competitive. The reading is presented by Scott Burbank, a Bellevue-based friend of Washington Initiative for Boys and Men. Scott shares this personal reflection on the message of the book:
This book hit a nerve for me. I was the oldest of three boys and was raised by a hard-working single mom. She was wonderful and loved her sons. But I didn’t get the competitive influence that my friends who had men in their lives got. Growing up, I sensed I didn’t have the competitive drive that others had and I wondered why. Would this book have helped me gain a more well-rounded view of competition? I think it would have added something, and who knows how that might have aided my development as a male. Now at age 64 I have learned the lessons in this book. I just wish I could have learned them sooner in my life.
Brilliant Bob kids’ books by Ken Jolivet
Available on Amazon, the seven books in the Brilliant Bob series are:
- Brilliant Bob is Brave
- Brilliant Bob is Competitive
- Brilliant Bob is Strong
- Brilliant Bob is Curious
- Brilliant Bob Takes a Risk
- Brilliant Bob is Stoic
- Brilliant Bob is Persistent
Brilliant Bob is Competitive uses sports as a vehicle to talk about competitiveness. To be clear, the book’s message is not that a male must be athletic or competitive to be masculine, nor is it that only males or masculine people are competitive.
Below are a couple excerpts from the book. Watch the video above to read the story in its entirety.
Brilliant Bob, Dazzling Dave, Genuine George and Superboy Sam realized that for some reason they all wanted to compete and win. And it didn’t matter what game they were playing. Each boy wanted to win and enjoyed the challenge and test of trying their absolute best.
Each boy had already been told a few times – by a teacher or coach – that being competitive wasn’t a good thing. They were told that it made others feel sad to lose and it was best to make everybody happy. But something about this felt wrong to each boy, no matter how many times they were told to let others win instead of trying their best to compete.
