Max Elliot Anderson wants boys to read. “I grew up hating to read, despite the fact my father was a successful author,” he says. “I decided to look into why I hadn’t enjoyed reading as a child—what I found caused me to explore writing the kinds of books I would’ve liked as a kid.” His lastest, Barney and the Runaway (Comfort Publishing), is about a boy who pretends to run away from home to teach his parents a lesson—only to learn some lessons himself when his plan goes horribly wrong. Anderson wrote the book to encourage both children and parents: “The main point to the story is that parents discipline their children because they love them.”