As members of the S.W.A.T. - Strong Wild Action Team - book club, the 15 regular members frequently talk about the bloody and gory scenes in the novels they're reading. Their bimonthly meetings are usually the exact opposite of the girls' book club, G.A.B. - Great Attitudes about Books - said English teacher Ede Marquissee.

The names and how they were arrived at couldn't be more different. The girls held a secret ballot to decide on their club's name. The boys shouted their ideas.

"I really like how Mrs. Marquissee separated the boys' books from the girls," said sixth-grader Sean Nichols. "The girls like to be all neat and tidy and orderly."

The boys spend most of the meetings fidgeting, out of their chairs and refraining from raising their hands, Marquissee said. The girls conduct their meetings more formally.

The book clubs were meant to be different. Summit Middle administrators noticed a difference between boys and girls in English test scores and decided to take action.

Girls scored 20 to 30 points higher than boys on the 2004-05 ISTEP+ tests at Summit and gaps are evident at every middle school in Southwest Allen County Schools, Northwest Allen County Schools, East Allen County Schools and all but one in Fort Wayne Community Schools.

Marquissee started S.W.A.T. in September with the intention of getting boys to read. G.A.B. also began in September and while the clubs are separated by gender, either sex can attend either group's meeting.

"We see a gap in the area of reading and language arts between the genders as they enter middle school," Principal Jim Leinker said. "It seems to be an ongoing phenomenon. I guess the sense is the boys would rather be doing something outside more physical and active than reading. As a result, that seems to cause some issues as far as comprehension when they read, etc."

So instead of spending their afternoons fighting and roughhousing, the boys are reading about it. The 15 boys in the club are on their third book this year and meet twice a month to talk about them. They're currently reading "Ender's Game," by Orson Scott Card, a story about aliens attacking Earth and a world government breeding military geniuses to make sure humans win the next battle.

While there are no test scores yet to prove it, Marquissee thinks the club is working. She thought the boys who would join would be those who are already reading and don't need an adventure book club to entice them.

While some of the boys are self-professed bookworms, there are also students in the club who failed ISTEP+ and are known around school as troublemakers, Marquissee said.

The boys agree that if they weren't reading the books, they'd probably be watching TV or playing video games. The club has also opened their eyes to books they actually like.

Marquissee schedules a male guest speaker once a month so the boys have a masculine perspective on the book. Monday's speaker was her son, Paul, a senior at Homestead High School, whose favorite book in middle school was "Ender's Game."

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