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By Lisa Thalhimer

The True Story of Boys Reading
An Interview with Jon Scieszka

Jon Scieszka is a funny guy. His several dozen children’s books are wildly successful and wonderfully zany.
But Scieszka is also a man on a very serious mission; he wants to help boys become better readers.
On his website, www.guysread.com, Scieszka (pronounced Chess-kuh) explains why boys might be having trouble reading. For example, he writes, “Boys don’t have enough positive role models for literacy. Because the majority of adults involved in kids’ reading are women, boys might not see reading as a masculine activity.”
In a telephone interview, Scieszka talked about his Guys Read campaign.

LT: What’s your goal in the Guys Read initiative?

JS: We’ve already reached the first goal, which was to create an awareness of the problem. And the tide is turning.
It’s important to see the problem being discussed. Organizations like the American Library Association and the International Reading Association are working to make positive changes in helping boys become better readers.
A lot of the success is related to the increase in male mentors. Minneapolis has done great work. They implemented Guys Read a hundred and twenty percent and one big piece of that was to have young college or high school guys in charge of the program.

What can we as parents and teachers do?

Understand that boys are reading, though not necessarily what the teachers are prescribing in school. They read graphic novels, magazines, humor and science fiction. They also read non-fiction to learn. Yet they get this weird message from the very beginning that they are not readers.
A lot of this came out of raising my own children, a girl and a boy.
Casey just loved everything about school from the very beginning. She was just really very accomplished. She traveled to China in high school because she wanted to learn Chinese.
Jake is a hockey player. He’s pretty competent but he got the message from the school system that reading was not for him.
Teachers and librarians need to take another look at their required reading lists and make sure that there are titles that boys will want to read.
We have to encourage boys to read what they like. The easiest thing I’ve found is to start spreading around titles of books that other boys do enjoy. I’ve got a page on my website for boys to vote on the books they like to read. Other boys can access those titles.

Can reading really work with the distractions of the electronic world?

That’s a huge challenge! I’ve been studying this for a few years. That is one of the first things I started asking boys. What is compelling about video games? You know what their answer was? I love when you can make your character do something.
And you know why girls say they love books? Oh we just love to get inside someone else’s head.
Boys would rather move the character around and make them do things.
But the computer age can be our saving, too. We can tell stories through online websites. It’s a good thing to use to excite kids.
We adults are just tourists in the online world. I think kids who have been raised with computers not only think differently…their brains were formed differently.

You grew up with five brothers. Were all of you readers? And what did you read as a child?

Half of us are readers. That actually led me to understand that not all boys are non-readers and not all girls are readers. Growing up, my older brother and I would read Hardy Boys, Mad Magazine, Cracked and of course, comic books.

The stereotype is that boys enjoy books that include bodily functions and pure action. It’s a cliché, and yet those of us who have boys or have taught boys know that there is a lot of truth in it. Can you react to that?

What I have been trying to do with the program is not to get sucked into clichés. Do boys have to have action and fart jokes?
I contacted nearly 100 authors and illustrators and asked them to contribute their thoughts and memories about being a guy for an anthology I edited titled “Guys Write for Guys Read.” (Penguin-Viking, 2005)
And you know, the stuff that came out was quintessentially guy. You have a story by Richard Peck about how he wanted to please his dad. And on the flip side, you have Gary Paulsen writing about his cousin peeing on an electric fence.
The nice thing about the book is that all of the stories are short. Guys can pick and choose. And there is something in it for everyone. (Even a comic by Mo Willems.)

I wanted to comment on your great sense of humor. You and illustrator Lane Smith create wonderful children’s books, most notably the Caldecott Honor book “The Stinky Cheese Man” and the inimitable “The True Story of the Three Little Pigs.” I reviewed “Cowboy & Octopus” in our September issue. And all of your books have this wonderful subversive quality!

Thank you! Yes, the stories are subversive. The real heart of kids’ lives is subversive. They’re trying to find their way in the world. Stories ring false when no one tries new and exciting things like lying and skipping school. I guess my role models in subversive literature come from Roald Dahl and Daniel Pinkwater.

Lisa recommends Scieszka’s own Time Warp Trio series for boys roughly ages six to 10.  Also, Anthony Horowitz’s newest book, Snakehead (Philomel, 2007), will appeal to young adult males, as the protagonist is a teen. In this adventure, the seventh in the Alex Rider series, he works for the Australian Secret Service and manages to crush the ruthless gangs of South East Asia.

Jon Scieszka’s Picks for Boys

 Non-fiction by David Macaulay and Russell Freedman

 Poetry by Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky

For early readers:  Jeff Brown, Roald Dahl, Louis Sachar and Daniel Pinkwater

For teens: “Oddballs” by William Sleator and “Watchmen” by Alan Moore

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