What are Little Boys Made of? Frogs, and snails, and adventure books.

With their short chapters, these action-packed books grab their audience!
With their short chapters, these action-packed books grab their audience!

I recently wrote a literature review about helping students enter Book World–a.k.a. the flow of reading.  Here are some interesting points that came up about boys:

  • There is negative peer pressure as boys struggle to be viewed as masculine (Merisuo-Storm, 2006; Watson, et.al., 2010).
  • Negative attitudes are contagious (Merisuo-Storm, 2006), which makes it important to identify and hook those students with negative attitudes first, before the disease spreads.
  • Boys do not have enough male models which is highly important as attitudes about reading develop early (Merisuo-Storm, 2006; Schwartz, 2002; Sullivan, 2004), especially in the area of viewing reading as recreation (Boltz, 2007).
  • Boys tend to read brief, informative texts (Boltz, 2007; Schwartz, 2002; Sullivan, 2004), where classroom read-alouds tend to be narrative.
  • Boys prefer non-fiction, comics, how-to manuals, graphic novels, sports, adventure, fantasy, humor, horror, and series books (Boltz, 2007; Merisuo-Storm, 2006; Schwartz, 2002; Sullivan, 2004).  Part of the appeal of series books is that boys can guarantee that they don’t accidentally pick out a “girl book” (Merisuo-Storm, 2006).  This is information that we can use.  If we can hook boys on a series they’ve got a reading plan laid out for a while.
  • Some studies show that boys are hard-wired to enjoy action books because they have less cross-hemispheric activity, thus needing an extra “jolt” in their reading (Boltz, 2007; Sullivan, 2004).
  • Teachers and librarians tend to treat “boy books” as sub-standard literature; we need to promote them in book talks (Sullivan, 2004).

As a result of my study, I changed how I shop for books for my class quite a bit.  I focused on short-chaptered action books for boys such as are now being written by James Patterson and John Grisham.

Reading Plan

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore? ~ Henry Ward Beecher ~
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore? ~ Henry Ward Beecher ~

One thing I teach my students is that it is important to have a reading plan.  We have a place for one in our reading notebooks, but I don’t really care how they accomplish this, the method is up to them.

I always have two stacks of books:  One is next to the bed and contains my current reading, the other is on a table at the foot of my bed where I can see it and think about what I want to read next.  I bring the pile next to my bed  in to the classroom and talk about how I decide what I will read.  I show them all the books I’m currently reading–usually a YA book, a non-fiction book, my Bible, and a cookbook.

We just got back from spending the summer in the states and returned with a suitcase and a half of new reading material.   Then I show them a photo of the books I have lined up to read for a while.