The Truth About Boys and Reading

What Boys Like To Read
Author Jon Scieszka writes books that appeal to boys—The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales is his most well-known. He’s also founder of Guys Read, a nutty website devoted to bolstering reading among boys. He edited the companion book Guys Write for Guys Read, a collection of essays from notable guys, including Stephen King, Gary Paulsen, and Simpsons creator Matthew Groening. Many of the pieces in the book are poignant and not all contain stories about bodily functions (although Paulsen’s and King’s entries are hilarious additions to the genre).

Scieszka, who is himself from a family of six boys, insists he doesn’t write with boys in mind so much as he does what interests his own instincts as a guy, and that includes parody. He began writing after ten years of teaching, years filled with faculty meetings with the same reading bias Coy noticed. “Women would suggest quieter titles,” Scieszka says. “I’d always suggest rowdy books.”

Scieszka launched Guys Read in 2000. Shortly thereafter, professors Jeffrey Wilhelm and Michael Smith published their book Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys, a study of what boys think about reading. What Wilhelm and Smith learned is that boys want to see themselves and their concerns in what they read. They want to be able to export what they learn from reading so they can share it with others and be immersed in what they’re doing—a pleasant condition experienced by many called “flow.”

Flow reading is so engrossing one forgets about time and revels in the experience. To achieve it, boys need a clear purpose, ongoing feedback about how they’re doing, help if they get stuck, and a chance to share what they’re learning. They need text that is neither too easy nor too hard and about topics they find relevant. And they prefer nonfiction with supporting visuals and short text since completing a short section provides a sense of accomplishment.

More than anything, we need to let boys choose what they read. Kathleen Baxter, an Anoka, Minnesota, retired librarian, makes upwards of 100 presentations a year on the topic of connecting boys and books. She advises grabbing a stack of books covering the kinds of topics boys love and asking them if they’re interested in a  book—if not, move on to the next. Bodily noises can’t miss. The book What You Never Knew About Tubs, Toilets and Showers, Baxter reports, is always a favorite with boys.

Tom Newkirk, a University of New Hampshire English professor and director of the New Hampshire Literacy Institutes, says we shouldn’t discount video games, comic books, and TV shows—as boys tend to experience things spatially.

Most video games and comic books are based on some type of quest in which an imperiled hero tries to find clues or treasure and earn advantages so he can go to the next level. Action, danger, a purpose, and a chance to share your score with your buddies—Newkirk sees it as boy catnip and suggests asking boys to create their own games and comic books as a support for reading adventure books.