David Letterman is no fool. The top 10 is king of lists, playing to the human attention span by distilling information into delightful, diminutive packages (like mini corn dogs for your brain).

Jeffrey Wilhelm understands the appeal, but rather than address "ways to describe Donald Trump's hair" or "signs your kitty is nuts," he came up with 200 topics meant to enlighten and engage young readers.

More than half have been published in an award-winning educational series called "The 10" that promotes deep analysis and constructive argument rather than passive consumption. Wilhelm is founder and series editor as well as an associate professor of English education at Boise State University, and he recruited a handful of local teachers to lend their voices to the project.

"Kids are fed information and are not being asked, how do scientists think? How do mathematicians think? How do entomologists think?" Wilhelm said. "The whole point of the books is to present some things the kids will recognize and provoke disagreement. We want them to think about the authors behind the texts, to be active readers and exert some muscle in resisting."

"There's no right or wrong answer," said Wilhelm's wife Peggy Jo, director of education at the Foothills School of Arts and Sciences in Boise and author of "The 10 Most Innovative Bands" (yes, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones made the cut). "When you look at teaching supplies at national conferences and everything is so watered down, being involved in something so innovative is exciting."

"The 10" template's innovation springs from a collaborative study done by Jeffrey Wilhelm and another professor, Michael Smith, while Wilhelm was at the University of Maine and Smith at Rutgers University. Working with about 50 adolescent boys over five years, they observed literacy patterns in and out of the classroom and how they play into individual interests and goals. They looked for material and conceptual triggers that caused the boys to engage and checked similar pre-study data about young women against Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's findings in 40 years of studying "flow" or focused experiential involvement.

Smith and Wilhelm found that students learn better and more eagerly when content is active, social, visual and, most of all, presented in a framework of inquiry. Simple memorization is not as effective as asking kids to relate things to their own lives.

Two years ago, Wilhelm proposed a series built around his research and the wisdom of many a seasoned teacher. Rubicon and Scholastic bit, and the project has been successful in Canada for almost a year. It recently won a Teacher's Choice Award for classroom material, and Wilhelm hopes it will make a splash in the United States after its release this month.

"It's an attempt to get to the heart of the matter, that learning is fun, dynamic and interesting. It says, you can do science, you can contend. Did you notice Pluto is no longer a planet?" he said. "It flies in the face of the information transmission curriculum. This is very transactional."

More simply, it is a collection of eye-popping, approachable, entertaining books that also happen to be educational. Peggy Jo Wilhelm compared them to graphic novels, because manageable columns of text are accented by dynamic photos, fun facts and prompts to get everyone in the classroom talking.

The equation works because the authors know the game. Having taught kids face to face for years, they understand the challenges. Many are National Writing Project fellows, including Boise teachers Sharon Hanson and Cameron Lindsey. Hanson has been in education for 21 years and teaches creative writing at Boise High School. Lindsey is in his fourth year of teaching English at Les Bois Junior High School. He completed three titles for the series - "Most Terrifying Experiences," "Most Dangerous Places on Earth," "Best Animal Disguises" - and said it was tricky to design and stick to selection criteria.

"It's really easy as a writer to get into the book, but the ranking is brutal," he said.

Even after the authors decided on an order, it was subject to editorial review. One of Hanson's top picks for "The 10 Best Love Poems" was bumped before her book went to press, but she felt it was in line with the series' mission to remind people to question why and how books are written.

"Writing that chapter and finding that poem still mattered to me. It really speaks to education. What matters isn't what the grade is, it's what did I learn? It's great to be up in front of the classroom walking the talk," Hanson said. "And delving into the life of Emily Dickinson, Shelley and Rumi; e-mailing Coleman Barks and getting an e-mail back from him - so much of it was a learning process, and not always the kind of learning we ask of our students."

Hanson, Lindsey and the Wilhelms agree it can be limiting for teachers to work entirely within a curriculum. But they have found ways to personalize their lessons, to look kids in the eye and get them to put topics in contexts great and small.

"You need to meet them on their terms, make things important and fun in their world. If you don't, they won't engage," Lindsey said.

"I don't think kids are lazy. I think they want to do what matters," Wilhelm said. "That's one of the tricks of the teaching trade - helping kids to see why learning is exciting and fun and interesting and powerful."

While the publishers have designated the 110-book series ideal for grades 5-10, they are generally appealing and resonant. They are not typical, but that is the point.

"It's always important as teachers to do things that challenge us and put us outside the box. It gives us creativity, empathy," Peggy Jo Wilhelm said. "Teaching is so relational. It's very powerful, and the most powerful when you're sympathetic to your students."

Erin Ryan: 672-6732