How to Be a Boy

This book features ten edgy stories from the streets of Britain and the US, inspired by the pressures of being a twenty-first century boy. Teenage boys are trouble. It’s in the news, on the front page – everywhere you look they’re doing drugs, messing with knives, terrorizing communities. But what if it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy? What if you’re 13, an OK kid in a bad life? What if you’re more urban poet than gangster rapper? What if deep-down you want to make your mum proud, but you’ve got to live up to your rep, be a bro, beat or be beaten? Gangs. Hoodies. Young offenders. How do you be a boy in a world that’s already got you tagged? It comes from writers new and established: Ian Beck, Katie Dale, Jamila Gavin, Keith Gray, Flint Keller, Mal Peet, Bali Rai, Steve Tasane, Dan Tunstall and Tim Wynne-Jones. This is a cutting-edge collection, keeping it real for real teen readers.