What Do Boys Like to Read? Ask Them.

The perception that reading is boring and a chore can be death to a young reader’s development. In order to read well, kids need lots of practice. The more you read the better you get. Although this sounds intuitive, there is a little more to it when the readers are boys.

When making reading selections for boys, do not underestimate the value of books with utility, action, and interest. Utility is important because struggling readers - especially boys - enjoy reading about real things. Utility gives boys a sense of agency when they read; they are learning about the real world in a way that helps them understand it better. The Guiness Book of World Records is popular with boys of all ages. Action may sound obvious, but is a bit more complicated. Adult readers, don’t necessarily need an action-oriented payoff, they can take pleasure in the dialogue and character development while the story builds. Many boys are impatient with stories that take too long to get off the ground or stories that are designed to convey some big important lesson they may be too young to understand. And, unfortunately, interest can’t always be placed on the top rung of priorities when meeting curriculum requirements.

There is nothing more damaging to literacy education than the perception that reading is something kids do for someone else; if boys are not encouraged to read what they want, the perception and its damage will be evident. Interest is what teachers and parents must pay attention to if they want to get boys reading and keep them reading.

I have been in too many schools and bookstores where boys were told “don’t you wanna’ read something else?” by adults who did not value or understand the choice a boy made. Trash is the word most often used when describing the books boys want to read. Whether a boy chooses comic books, wrestling magazines, video game “cheat” books, or a slang dictionary, their choices should be taken seriously.

I hate skateboarding. I don’t know why I just do. Every time I see some boy tripping over a skateboard again and again I just shake my head. When my son was 12 (he’s 15 now) he loved skateboarding, it was all he talked about. I relented and bought him a skateboard, but I refused to spend good money on a skateboarding magazine. We eat breakfast at the same place on Saturdays and our regular stop before the restaurant is a magazine store. One weekend after I had made my choices and was at the register I turned around to find my boy standing there looking sad…with a skateboarding magazine in his hand. “It’s their special double issue and it talks about all the top skateboarders,” he said. I tried to smile over my gritted teeth and bought the magazine. It was the size of a small city phonebook and he read it for a week straight. Although there weren’t what I would call meaty articles, there were a lot of short interviews and pictures. Many of the skateboarders talked about how they didn’t’ fit it at school, or about how skateboarding kept them out of trouble. As a literacy scholar I couldn’t find any justification whatsoever in keeping my son from something he liked that, outside of a few racy ads, he enjoyed reading. Four months later he had subscriptions to all four of the main skateboarding publications. He read them all as soon as they hit the living room table.