Connecting boys with books

...that's the title of a book I read while on vacation in the North Carolina mountains. But this isn't really a book review, more a discussion of the subject itself. Here's the info on the book:

Sullivan, Michael. (2003). Connecting boys with books: What libraries can do. Chicago, IL: American Library Association.

Here are the statistics which form the premise of the book: Fourth grade girls score higher on reading than boys, and that gap has increased in the past 10 years. Boys are an average of one and a half grades behind girls in reading. Boys are twice as likely to be diagnosed with a reading disability than girls. Seventy percent of children in remedial classes are boys. More women than men are enrolling in colleges and universities. (Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress and the United States Department of Education, as reported by Sullivan).

As the mother of sons, this book scared me. As a former teacher who never understood why my male students were so active until I became the mother of sons, this book made me sad. It reaffirmed a fact that I already knew to some extent: behavior that considered appropriate for school and the library--sitting still, being quiet, and learning introspectively--comes much more naturally to girls than to boys, and therefore boys are more likely to get into trouble in school and less likely to feel welcome in the library than girls. Additionally, many books chosen by librarians for book talks and promotion are geared more towards girls. Many of the books feature female protagonists on the cover or are written by females. However, one of the series that Sullivan mentions as very appropriate for boys, the Harry Potter series, was written by a woman.

According to Sullivan, library programs start "losing" boys at around the age of 5 (the age of my older boy, another reason I found this book frightening). Drawing boys of early elementary age or older to the library involves developing programs that encourage a high level of activity and competition. Even the activity of drawing a picture about a book--an activity that I thought would work across genders--is considered quiet and introspective and more appropriate for girls. Sullivan suggests competitive activities such as chess and other board games, or rolling a large amount of paper across a wall and creating a mural and letting the boys draw a large scene from a book. He suggests programs focused on sports or other games, and he suggests timing such programs at hours when fathers can attend with their sons. He also suggests book-talking adventure and action books, such as the Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings series, or humor books. He suggests allowing boys to read whatever they will read, even if that means that they read books that are a couple of grade levels beneath their capabilities.

He mentions that males of all ages often prefer nonfiction and/or short segments such as magazine articles, a fact that I had not considered but which makes perfect sense, although of course there are exceptions to every rule--I like nonfiction myself. I have never seen my husband read a novel in the 20 years that I have known him, but he does quite a bit of what he calls "reality reading," articles from news and consumer magazines and a few nonfiction books. But how many nonfiction books are considered "quality literature"?

Of course much of this is generalization; there are many men who are avid readers and many women who do not read for pleasure at all. I was very impressed as a classroom teacher to find several of my eighth-graders reading Tolkien, an author whose language I have trouble with. What Sullivan addresses, and what I found frightening, are the statistics, both on literacy in boys and on how that issue is being addressed in library programs.