Guys Read

My husband and I were both early readers and didn't need much help or encouragement to get started. So we have both been troubled that our six-year-old son hasn't been more excited about reading. We've read to him every day since he was an infant, taken him to the library quite regularly, and have encouraged him to play with educational toys like LeapPad and alphabet blocks. While his intelligence is evident in other ways - especially his ability to express himself verbally - his reading skills are not where we expected they would be by this age.

I was thrilled when a friend recently e-mailed me with a link to Guys Read. This is a literacy program for boys led by Jon Scieszka, one of our favorite authors of children's books, including Math Curse and Science Verse. Jon also grew up with five brothers, taught elementary school for 10 years, and is the father of a son and a daughter. So he knows a thing or two about boys and reading.

The Guys Read site is packed with information on why boys need a different approach to reading, how to motivate them to read, and lists of books (organized by age) that may be more appealing to boys. The site also has resources to start a Guys Read initiative at your own school or library, complete with downloadable stickers, posters and bookmarks.

A year or two ago, I would have disputed the idea that boys and girls have such different motivations for reading and learning to read. But my son's experiences in kindergarten have given me new insights. If you need more convincing that boys could benefit from a new approach when it comes to literacy, check out this Newsweek article, which points out some of the ways that boys learn differently that girls, and how many schools and teachers are failing to engage boys in learning.

After reading more about boys' motivations for reading and learning to read, I found that it's typical for boys to want to read to gain some kind of information - whether it's instructions for a video game, sports statistics, or even information about a topic that interests them, like guitars. They also like humor, comics, and graphic novels. Boys are less interested in "literature" in the way many of us would normally define it - short stories, poetry, and novels - but this is how schools typically approach teaching children to read.

Now that I've learned more about this, I can look back over the last couple years at how my son's interest in reading has developed - he has been interested in reading things like the credits at the end of a TV show, the liner notes of a CD or DVD, the information/promotion on the back of his cereal box, the words he sees on street signs and store signs and mail. He has been more interested in informational books than story books. What an "Aha!" moment this has been. He doesn't care what Dick and Jane are going to do next; he wants to know who designed the game he is playing on his GameBoy or which streets we go past before we get to the grocery store. These are his motivations for learning to read.

Maybe someday he will develop an appreciation for great novels. But I'm not going to worry about that now; I'll read Dav Pilkey books all day with him (and TV show credits and cereal boxes and street signs). I'm going to encourage his literacy in whatever way I can.

What I've uncovered so far about boys' literacy is just the tip of the iceberg, I believe. This is a concern of many parents and teachers, and one that is already getting some attention - though it needs more, in my opinion. If you're the parent of a boy and you have concerns about his interest in reading, here are a few more resources:

- A Slate article by Emily Bazelon, another mom of boys, about her experiences with reading and some of her insights on what boys are looking for in books.

- A recent post from children's book illustrator Patricia Storms on her blog BookLust.

- And here is a book I'm going to track down - Connecting Boys with Books: What Libraries Can Do by Michael Sullivan.


Thanks to Susan Thomsen from Chicken Spaghetti for her guidance and resources on this topic. Check out her blog for lots more on children's literature, and for other blogs about children's literature.