My reading likes

Looking for any kind of an influence on what to me felt at the innermost level what it meant to be a boy is not the easiest thing to do but looking for what I identified more with was more with the adventures of Tom and Huck in Mississippi in the 1840's where much of the modern state apparatus just didn't exist, schooling was in its infancy any adventure was subject to discovery and consequences.
To be able to just go off and explore investigating whatever held your attention was something that was uppermost in my mind with the limits we had of just woodland and unstructured play areas to do ours in, that to be was the spirit of boyhood in its rustic ruggedness.
Civilization is not a bad thing, far from it but an excess of social control that puts being as clean as a tailors dummy, that disallows the vibrant and natural aggression  of boys crushes the spirit  running contrary to what a boy is and feels.
He's not decorative nor genteel but lively and assertive and he learns his limits though rough play and not by denial of his masculine core.
For me at that time, this book was very much an affirmation of being.