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 by Drego Little
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
urgency when they read; they are learning about the
real world in a way that helps them understand it
better. The Guinness Book of 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 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 in 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.
And what did I learn? I put my disdain for a
sport before my son’s reading development. It is
very hard not to do this. As parents we have values
that are sometimes at odds with what our kids think
is cool. Not a new phenomenon, but one that should
be carefully considered when reading material is at
issue. No educational dictum I’ve seen could be more
easily followed than one that requires one question:
What do you want to read?
©2006 Parents’ Choice®. Reprinted with
permission of Parents’ Choice Foundation.
Established in 1978, Parents’ Choice is the nation’s
oldest nonprofit guide to quality children’s media
and toys.
http://www.parents-choice.org/
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