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GREENSBORO — Carol Christian still wore her U.S. Air Force fatigues when she strolled into the Erwin Montessori cafeteria with her third-grade son, Garrett Jackson.

She commutes daily from Greensboro to Fayetteville, but didn’t want her son to miss the Boys Love Books club meeting.

Still, physical education teacher Chris Carroll wouldn’t make an exception, even for her.

“No girls allowed,” he reminded her. “This is a boys club.”

Christian didn’t object.

“The one-on-one interaction with the other males is great,” said Christian, a technical sergeant stationed at Fort Bragg. “(Garrett) did tell me, even when they started it, that it was the boys’ book club, not the females’.”

Carroll’s relationship with the students at Erwin could be one dimensional. He gets paid to teach them how to stay active and healthy, how to play floor hockey or dance the Cupid Shuffle.

But he believes boys at the school have plenty of interest in exercise. What they generally lack is a passion for reading, he said.

“What I’m trying to get them to do is read because they want to, not because they have to,” Carroll said.

About five years ago, he started meeting with groups of boys during and after school to read. Michelle Allison recalls that two years ago her then-fourth-grade son, Nolan, read the “Percy Jackson & The Olympians” series and researched Greek mythology on the Internet.

Nolan rarely read on his own and preferred to play video games or compete in Quarter Midget car racing, she said.

“He read one of the books literally within two days because it was so good and he was into it,” said Allison, a science teacher at Weaver Academy. “He always looked forward to going to the book club.”

This fall, Carroll expanded his club into a monthly event with fathers and reading buddies from Dudley High School. The first event drew about 60 people and featured a comic books illustrator.

On Thursday, about 20 boys gathered in the cafeteria to read African and Native American folktales, Chinese legends and Mexican fairy tales.

Qlyl Middlelijn, a Dudley junior, took turns reading passages with some of the children. He said he would have benefited from this program as a child.

“I know when I was younger I didn’t really have that male figure to read with me,” he said. “I know it can be hard, and I had to teach myself.”

Other children, such as Garrett Jackson, get daily reading time with the help of their parents. Carroll listened as Garrett read from the latest book in the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series.

“It’s really fun and neat and it’s good for your brain because you can learn,” Garrett said about the club.

Contact Morgan Josey Glover at 373-7078 or morgan.josey@news-record.com