Hooking Boys on Reading

Literacy experts suggest that to be more effective in sparking boys’ interest in reading, we may have to broaden our views and make more use of nontraditional resources.

By Jessica Forrero

It is often easier to find an adolescent boy cleaning his room than to find him voluntarily reading a book. With so many distractions competing for his attention – video games, instant messaging, TV and sports – the odds of his picking up a book on a Saturday afternoon are slim to none. Unless he is being graded, your child probably has zero motivation to read for pleasure.

As a parent, you may feel as though you have exhausted all of your resources. You’ve dragged him to the library on a frequent basis, lectured him on the importance of reading until you were blue in the face, modeled good reading habits in front of him, limited screen time and stocked the house with “recommended” books. Regardless of your efforts, your son still would rather have dental work performed than spend a free minute engaged in a book.

So now what?

Go Nontraditional

The problem may lie more with our definition of reading than with boys’ attitudes toward books. Both educators and parents are guilty of defining “reading” in overly narrow terms; thus, we may be overlooking nontraditional literary resources that have the power to tap into boys’ interests and foster a love of reading that every parent hopes to witness. According to John Scieszka, author of The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and founder of the Web site GuysRead.com, we have to give boys more choices – especially more nonfiction.

“Boys like to read for a purpose, to find out how to do things, like how to build a dirt bike or skateboard. That’s just not encouraged enough,” Scieszka says.
In support of this view, Jeff Wilhelm, an associate professor of English education at Boise State University and an authority on boys and literacy, explains that “boys like to read what’s toolish, not schoolish.”

Video game guides, how-to manuals, Guinness Book of World Records, books on tape, comic strips, newspaper sports columns – these are all valid sources of literacy that are often overlooked by parents and educators who claim these sources fall outside the realm of “real” reading.

“Boys prefer reading things that have something they can immediately use, talk about, argue about or do something with,” Wilhelm says.