What it feels like to be a boy

Alison Flood writes in The Guardian of how the judges for the Carnegie medal, Britain's oldest children's book award, have drawn up a shortlist consitingo of entirely 'boysy' stories. She says: "Magic and monsters are conspicuous by their absence this year from the shortlist for Britain's oldest children's book prize, the Carnegie medal, which is dominated by titles featuring ordinary children dealing with the pitfalls and adventures of everyday life." (The Carnegie is in its 72nd year and is seen as the most 'the kids' Booker.)

Getting boys to read for pleasure has, of course, been the subject of much literary angst. Girls have always appeared to gravitate more naturally than boys towards books or anything literary. I am currently one of the judges for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Young Malaysians for 2009. I was sent the final shortlist of twenty essays/short stories to grade, out of which, interestingly, 16 were by girls. But as a bookseller I, notice that I have as many customers who are women as men, although their buying habits are different.

Keith Gray, one of the authors on the list says: "People have said it's quite boysy -- I say hurrah for that. There seem to be quite a lot of books out there for girls, about what it feels like to be a girl in modern times, whether it's Jacqueline Wilson or pinker, fluffier books. Whereas a lot of books aimed at boys are about being a spy, fighting monsters, being a vampire. It's great to have some which are about what it feels like to just be a boy ... So many books for boys are about being X Box-style heroes -- it's so nice to have more down to earth heroes."

But is the problem all about books not appealing to boys? I know why I started reading -- the pictures. Then when I was in primary school, I had the most wonderful history teacher a boy could have. Mr Selvaratnam was his name, and the twelve-inch ruler was his game. And with his ruler he could transform from a sword-wielding pirate to a Portuguese commandant with a blunderbuss or a Japanese soldier with a bayonet. He would prance about in front of the class swishing and shooting and stabbing with his ruler, setting free our imagination. So I was more than a bit surprise when, during my Form 4 years, some of my classmates decided to 'drop' History and Literature. How could anyone not like history and literature, I thought?

Going back to the Carnagie, Gray describes himself as a reluctant reader as a child. He says the first book he was persuaded to pick up was the Carnegie-winning The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall. "I can remember seeing the Carnegie medal stamped on the front cover. Just having my name on the shortlist is great," he says. "The Machine Gunners got me reading, and that's what got me writing, so you could say the Carnegie turned me into a reader and a writer."

My son grew up in the eighties, amply distracted by the television and video games. (Internet was not available then). Interestingly, what started him reading were the movies. I remember queuing for the tickets for Jurassic Park because he was into the dinosaur phase too at the time. I had never read Michael Crichton before, but I decided to get a copy of the book just for the heck of it. He saw it lying around the house and asked if he could read it. He never looked back after that. So boys do read for different reasons, but I suspect having books around the house does not hurt.

One frequently asked question we get at Silverfish Books is from parents who want to know how they can get their children, especially boys, to read? We generally manage to huff and puff round that question. But what we really really want to say is: "So what books do you read?"

Turning boys into bookworms

A story in The Independent by Warwick Mansell, Power of words: How a children's writer is turning boys into bookworms, tells how writer GP Taylor is making pupils read by telling them stories, with some remarkable results.

Which comes as a bit of surprise. It should be expected, one would have thought. Common sense. But when bureaucratic educationists get into the act, I should think they'd be able to committee anything to death, including common sense. I started reading because it was fun, because I could go places I never could in real life. My memory of childhood is all about story-telling by my parents, my uncles, aunts and older cousins.

Graham Taylor is an ex-vicar, ex-policeman, and exorcist turned multi-million selling author of fantasy novels who has visited more than 150 primary schools this year to tell children stories, for which he does not charge. His object is to get students, especially boys, reading for pleasure.

The British Government's national literacy strategy has been accused of focusing on teaching reading mainly through extracts of books, and drilling pupils to pass tests. " ... the literacy strategy, introduced in 1998, which emphasized the teaching of reading and writing as the acquisition of discrete skills -- such as word decoding, analysing sentence structure, spelling and grammar -- without actually getting pupils wanting to read in the first place."

Professor Teresa Cremin, president of the United Kingdom Literacy Association, says: "Children were shown a text and asked to find the adverbial clause, or asked what complex sentences they could find in a paragraph. This approach can get a bit farcical."

You bet. Who cares what part of speech a word is, or how a sentence is structured. What's important are the stories they tell and the joy a child gets when he reads them. Reading is entertainment, but if there is one thing the school system does well it to take all the joy out of it, and make it  a chore.

Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, says: "There was an overemphasis on skills and an underemphasis on the reason why you would read. Reading for pleasure suffered."

Professor Cremin agrees: "The pressure to achieve the level fours and level fives in tests is so great that teachers have felt that there is not the time to engage in reading for pleasure".

Which is kind of funny because children who read for pleasure will surely do better in tests, as results show at St Peter's Church of England primary school in Ashton-under-Lyne, outside Manchester. Last year 83 per cent of pupils gained their expected level, well ahead of the school's 43 per cent target.

The Independent