Introduction

Encouragement of progress in reading is best served by pleasure: pleasure in words, in story, in the inspiration to be turning pages, in the delights of discovery - pleasure in reading.

It is a fact that as they get older a significant proportion of boys may be observed to be generally less eager in reading than many girls. For years this trend has been an anxiety for educationalists and for parents. The phenomenon is nothing new but it is perhaps exaggerated in our minds today by the development of the habitual nature of many time-consuming entertainments brought about by modern technology. It is another generalisation, but boys and technologies do go together. Each device can be perceived as a distraction as well as some having great value as a source of information. Many youngsters have easy access to a number of such technologies and overuse of any can swallow up time day after day and week after week.

Reading is a skill for life and, like any skill, once acquired it does need to be exercised and challenged, honed and developed, in order to become most effective. The pleasure and satisfaction which comes from whole books, not just pages and extracts, leads a reader into applying, using and extending reading ability in the most effective manner. But even more importantly it establishes a reading habit which will lead to advantageous qualities all round as well as being a source of much enjoyment for the future. The aim of this annotated list is to draw attention to many currently available books which all have what might be defined as 'boy appeal'.

The essential criteria for the selection of the books for this Boys Into Books have been:

The age range overlaps with the recent SLA publication Riveting Reads Plus: Book Ahead 0 - 7, by Julia Eccleshare, as that obviously also includes Years R, 1 and 2.[1] The introduction to that publication, by Prue Goodwin, also has much of relevance for the content here, as does Alec Williams' introduction to Boys Into Books 11 - 14, by Eileen Armstrong, 2007.[2]

There are many ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all.[3]

The 'Books boys will enjoy' definition for this selection absolutely and certainly does not mean that titles included here will not appeal to girl readers as well. Of course they will: all of the titles here have been selected because they have particular factors that are likely to have some appeal for boys out of the mass of books appearing in the UK each year. To a certain extent the younger children are, then the less there is any differential between their choices of books. But boys do have a particularly strong affiliation and enthusiasm for dinosaurs as well as for stories and things featuring anything mechanical. Boys and girls all enjoy animal stories and those with a lot of fun and humour have special boy appeal. Of course anything said along these lines is extremely generalised: tastes vary enormously and there can never be one plan to fit all.

Reading and books can play a key role in children's lives.[4]

In front of me I have two books of wide ranging advice and information for teachers, in manual form, and each purporting to be fairly complete. These are titled The Creative Teaching and Learning Toolkit,[5] published in July 2007, and Primary Teacher's Handbook,[6] published in October 2007. In the first the index has nothing at all under 'books', or under 'fiction', or 'library', or 'poetry'. 'Stories' are there but this refers to very short purpose-made functional stories given in the text as useful tools for teaching other matters. The second book has no index but the main body of it outlines 'Effective Teaching Strategies' set out in alphabetical order. No, there's nothing here on using books, or on reading for pleasure, or on any group activities promoting or applying reading. The section on 'Literacy' has 2⅔ pages in all with 2 of them devoted to ICT.  'Reading Periods' in the Toolkit book is just one paragraph stating that some schools have a short time for everybody to be reading at the start of each day, the reason given is the social desirability of the calming effect of a universally observed quiet time.

Without the slightest hesitation I can state that reading is an essential tool in the process and the progress of learning. Those who take pleasure in books and reading will develop that facility, the complex physiological skills of reading, with greater ease than others. They will also more rapidly develop abilities to differentiate when handling information and to more precisely apply whatever they might need for any task or purpose. The two books discussed above are supposedly embracing all of the primary phase of schooling. I find it astonishing to note the complete omission of any focus on the importance of Story, of Books, of Reading Strategies.

I, together with my colleagues here at the SLA, firmly maintain that

are absolutely fundamental elements of the primary ages and stages of education. These are also the corner-stones of effective teaching, learning and development.

Boys tend to enjoy fiction that is very direct throughout all the years of their primary schooling: books with action that seldom flags, humour in large dollops and with characters slightly larger than life. Bright and attractive covers can exert an enormous influence when boys are choosing books. As they grow older and as reading proficiency develops, boys' choices broaden as well. Currently extremely popular are fantasy tales of every shade - mock-medieval scenarios, wizardry, future-set alternative worlds, and places existing in parallel to our own time. Buccaneering piracy rates very highly and varies from factually based historical stories, fantastic sea-farer based tales or farcical misadventures. Young adventurers, the youthful spies and young folk developing or acquiring special powers, are another genre in demand. Books with sport based themes and of course anything related to football will have a likely chance of being a hit as well. 

Boys' absolutely favourite choices of books are usually linked with high-profile and successful TV series or films which are current cinema hits with young people. Towards the end of 2007 'Doctor Who Books', as a generalised label, were dominant amongst Years 4, 5 and 6 and cited as 'the best' by some younger boys in Years 1 and 3. In many instances the Doctor Who Annual was what they had in mind. The following list has one tie-in example from the multiplicity of Doctor Who novels, by a much respected author, as well as one of the 'choose your own adventure' style of Doctor Who books.

The Simpsons also crops up as a favourite and is almost a standard, if such a term can be applied when discussing a current high profile definition. The topical peak in popularity is probably due to the big-screen film, the DVD release and all the tie-in marketing. I should confess that on the noticeboard in front of me is a newspaper 'comics' page of a Simpsons strip with the skinflint Mr Burns preferring to buy youngsters a $1000 dollar computer for mind-numbing activities than give them $50 that 'they might spend on something dangerous - like a book!' Books and 'souvenir specials' about Shrek have popularity, and also with a very broad age range, as a new film appears and its later transfer to DVD ensures double the publicity and merchandising opportunities. A notable difference in major commercial enterprises is that the Pirates of the Caribbean films and the very high profile of associated toys and paraphernalia has resulted in great demand for anything to do with pirates at all, including any stories and books about any pirates.

A subject rather than a specific book title will sometimes be cited as a favourite by boys. If interest gets really hooked by something they will read any and everything they can that is relevant: so skateboarding, BMX, wildlife, dinosaurs and football come up as choices. This dedication to a single topic is often both fuelled and reinforced by a friend, or a group, following the same paths. Often some boys will create their own small library, their collection of books / magazines / manuals / catalogues etc. on one subject, or one aspect of a subject, and read and re-read these over and over again for weeks or months. Precious items like football match programmes, perhaps a souvenir or two of attendance at the game, get read even after the contents are virtually known by heart.

When making provision for boys' reading, information - or non-fiction - books must have a high profile.

A young boy named Ricky, returning David Macaulay's Unbuilding to the library, told me it was his favourite book. I asked him what he liked about it. "It's about architecture," he said. "I never knew you were interested in architecture," I responded. "I wasn't," Ricky admitted, "Until I read this book."[7]

Non-fiction varies tremendously in quality. There really is an awful lot of boring looking, uninspiring material about on all sorts of subjects. By seeking out publishers who can be relied upon to produce bright, user-friendly books, a lot can be found which boy readers will appreciate. Pictures are important and not just as decoration: well chosen illustrations or photographs, well printed with clarity and of a useful size, often add far more to the information than is relayed by the words alone. I've observed youngsters who are not too proficient at reading, the younger boys as well as the less able, thoroughly involved in the facts they glean from the illustrations in a good book, even what is nominally a grown-up book, that is prolifically illustrated.

Boys read print in many forms. An observation on related, but contrasting, lines to the above is that whilst we lay great emphasis on the attractions of brilliant design and type layout in books, I've noted boys in playgrounds poring over the teeny tiny print with all sorts of facts on the backs of picture cards. The comparisons of information necessary for 'Top Trumps' games and variants can have them wholly absorbed in reading - during 'break'. The card-collecting phase lives on as commercial campaigns advertise their released batches of related must-have series of cards to be collected, and swapped or exchanged in competitive gaming. There is a certain amount of active reading happening almost in spite of us adults!

In Ideas in Action: Encouraging Reading Susan Elkin[8] makes the point that boys are often happy to read magazines rather than books and she adds 'Don't dismiss the fiction they include'. No, indeed, and some might be encouraged to try a book that is along the same lines as stories they meet in alternative forms, or even by the same writer. The National Literacy Trust survey of 2005 demonstrates that whilst girls are more likely to be reading more than boys there are many text sources, websites, annuals, leaflets, manuals and all sorts of ephemera as well as factual books and graphic novels where boys' preferences are the keenest. Joke books go down a treat, sharing them especially! 

The comic-strip style, or graphic, book has great appeal for many boys. On the whole these were at first simply bound editions of sequences which had been published as slim weekly comics. This echoes the origins of many of the great novels of the 19th century which were first available in monthly parts. Nowadays there's a quantity of books created for the graphic form with an enormous range in both styles and approaches. On the Continent, picture-strip books take up quite a high proportion of the whole children's book sales and are very prominent in shop displays. But here we still tend to be a little nose-in-the-air about them. Perhaps that adds greatly to their attraction for boys! For the primary age there's relatively little enough in bound book form readily available though there's an ever-eager readership. The Beano and Dandy annuals and the like, Disney tie-ins and weekly comics make up most such material. Raymond Briggs' superb books, like The Snowman, Fungus the Bogeyman and so on, are in graphic/ picture strip form and some mainstream publishers are planning expansions into new graphic format series for the very near future. Some specific recent titles are included amongst other books in the following list.

Manga is the current craze and book-shops have shelves of serried ranks of confusingly similar looking book spines. There's a very fine Manga Shakespeare appearing play by play and if Macbeth turns up in this style it will be perfect for 9s to 11s. It is extremely useful that the main suppliers, Tokyopop and Viz, give an age-appropriate symbol on each of their books such as T for 'teen'. There's a Y for 'youth or 10+' and an A for 'all ages' but only a comparatively really tiny number of books in either category - and even less of any recent publication. I find this puzzling as the demand is certainly out there especially as younger boys always want to emulate a reading craze of some older ones. But perhaps it has been self defeating, there's so little appropriate that what is there has been swamped by the enormous quantities of titles and series for teens and older teens. Even within the severely limited amount of books for Y or for A ages there are series like Et Cetera with cowboys but a girl as the heroic central figure. Some Disney tie-in titles, like Kingdom Hearts, appear in slim manga style paperbacks. There is one perfect example for boys in the series Whistle! with Number 18 just published, a football tale in manga form: great news - hold the back page!

Newspapers are read, very selectively, by some boys as they grow through the later primary years. Over the years I have occasionally conducted a number of local surveys into children's reading habits across a number of schools. Sometimes these have included all the infant, junior and all-through primary schools which are the principal partner schools for the secondary school surveyed as well. Every time, in addition to everything else emerging, it is obvious that many boys read newspapers, frequently dwelling on some of the sports pages thoroughly and then taking in more of the paper at a glance. What is clear every time is that for both boys and girls the one print source to reach more of them than any other is the main local newspaper for their home area. That is the place to put any information, or for your youngster's own reviews of books if that can be arranged, to reach the largest possible local numbers - including parents.

Poetry is read by boys if there's a fine pace, a distinct rhythm and sharp rhymes. Humour of course can be extra pointed and emphasised in verse. Narrative verse carries a tale along rapidly with short lines. Poetry always looks friendly and less daunting in print: there are never big blocks of words, pages have white bits around and between sections, the verses or other structure makes it appear easier for the mind and eye to organise as reading. To demonstrate the point here is a poem, it reads aloud well (try it) and features a cat: undoubtedly a tom-cat, as he bemoans his daily lot with a wordy poet and longs for the sorts of adventurous lives boys like to read about.

The Poet's Cat[9]
Why must I be a poet's cat,
Consigned to sit beside the fire upon a mat,
Aspiring to no greater act - than to catch the occasional rat
Or mouse?
(Within, of course, the confines of the house.)

Why should I be a poet's cat,
Conscripted to purr, lick fur - and to be fat?
For I can dream - not just of cream
But of 'Cat the Hunter' wild and lean,
Stalking the night
Unseen by human eye.
Fighting,
Conquering,
Rejoicing at the moon ...
But the dream fades ... too soon,
Too soon in time,
And rhyme ...

And after all,
I'm just a poet's cat,
And not even a good poet at that.
Why could he not have written me
Aboard a galleon gold and black,
Full sailed, at sea.
Or flying,
Sleek coated, green of eye,
Upon a witch's broomstick
Across a star-pierced sky?
A fearsome silhouette ...
Never a pet.

But then,
I'm only a poet's cat,
And have to be content with that.
And so ...
Beside 'the flickering fire's glow'
I sit,
As writ.

Thanks to Michael Day, former primary teacher and deputy-head, for the use of this poem.

Series fiction can be a splendid boon. Once a reader gets into a series then he is on familiar ground with every other book. Of course the fact that others will be reading about the same characters and situations means that chatting about them and speculation on different aspects becomes a self-supporting and self-perpetuating duo or group support. The kudos of being first to read something new is a tremendous incentive as well. Boys particularly relish the safety in finding another book they know they can manage and that they will enjoy, they want things to have a foundation of familiarity and then to take them forward into a fresh story.

Another keenly felt incentive to reading, and to owning, series books can be the collecting instinct - the urge to be completist, and to have something other collectors may lack, can be very strong. So success with any such title can open the door to many more. A number of titles which form a sequence, such as Harry Potter, as opposed to a series can be fantastic as there is an end-game in sight after a given number of books. The danger is that any reader can stick in the comfort-zone of familiarity with a series for too long. The following list includes a number of titles which are in series and suitable for a range of abilities.

A mixed and balanced reading programme is important: all readers, all healthily growing readers, need a broad mixture of reading experiences. The fact that I might enjoy Dostoevsky does not mean I have to read at that demanding intensive level each time. I might well follow something really demanding on the attention with a good thriller. In the same way I recently felt the need to follow reading Siobhan Dowd's astonishingly striking young adult book Bog Child with a number of light-hearted titles which appear in this list. Boy readers need jokes, anecdotes, comics, awfully corny juvenile funnies, all-action thrills and more demanding novels alongside each other and intertwined to enrich the whole of their reading experiences.

Feeding young minds with nothing but sterile and unimaginative prose is the equivalent of allowing, or encouraging, a regular diet of too much junk food in feeding their bodies. What does worry me is the manner in which a young reader can be occupied solely with very mundane, formulaic prose - of the sort sometimes to be found in computer generated series or in cashing-in on a craze and copycat publishing - to the exclusion of all else. It is up to us as adults to ensure that our burgeoning readers have ample opportunity to enjoy and benefit from that essential broad balance.

The great tried and tested standard authors go on and on as the very qualities that gained them sure-fire success with readers are met by new readers growing old enough to encounter their books for themselves. That Very Hungry Caterpillar chews holes in the pages for the very first time for some child, somewhere, over and over again. A few years ago I did some work with a major chain bookseller and observed how a newer classic, The Gruffalo, was pleasingly gaining status over a few years by child and parent demand rather than being reliant on any publicity campaign. Roald Dahl's great books are always rightly popular and Michael Morpurgo's The Butterfly Lion sets fresh eyes a-blinking every time. Harry Potter is read and re-read and the appearance of new films, and the televising of previous ones, constantly feeds the immediacy. Many parents' and teachers' favourites from their own childhood stay available and still exert magic.

On my own shelves I have loads of good old and newer favourites ever ready for sharing with youngsters. These books are some which have proved their success over and over again. Single stories from various world-wide folk-tale collections are marked with a veritable museum of post-it markers, as are individual poems in anthologies. There are picture books galore from Quentin Blake, especially the technological Mrs Armitage, and Shirley Hughes' Dogger to newer titles such as the quirky Neal Layton's Bartholomew and The Bug with a kindly bear helping bug to get to the lure of the city's bright lights. Allan Ahlberg's poetry books are all terrific, Heard it in the Playground is my own prime choice. Lawrence Anholt's Seriously Silly Stories, with Arthur Robins' pictures, go down a treat with a broad age range. The Eighteenth Emergency by Betsy Byars is such fun; when the biggest boy in the school is after you it may, or may not, be a help to have a friend suggesting useful tips like having sticks handy to prop a croc's mouth open should that be an imminent danger - and always that high-noon hour creeps ever closer.

Humphrey Carpenter's long running Mr Majeika series is always reliable. War Game with Michael Foreman's stunning words and pictures centred on a story framework for that World War One no-mans-land football match is magnificent. The more recent Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin is beautifully paced through the strands of a long historical thriller. Alan Gibbons' terrific classics-meet-gaming stories which began with Shadow of the Minotaur have just reappeared as three books in one as The Legendeer Trilogy published by Orion. Another recent re-appearance is Hare's Choice from Barn Owl Books: Dennis Hamley's opening chapter still stuns older primaries and younger secondaries into wonder, then in story context the book explores differing imaginary interpretations in the minds of different children.

Ted Hughes' The Iron Man is a winner over and over again and a gift to imaginative teaching and Clive King's Stig of the Dump has two opening pages that catch the concentration, and the wanting 'more', every time. Lots of poems from the prolific Roger McGough hit the mark: the collection I rely on is All the Best. There's many Michael Morpurgo titles for each and every year group, Philip Pullman's Clockwork is a tremendous shorter tale, I cannot look at any page of Lemony Snicket's Unfortunate Events series without hearing a lugubrious Clement Freud-like tone in my head, and it comes out like that too! Robert Westall's The Machine Gunners is absolutely gripping and transports boys' imaginations to be wholly in the midst of things on the home front in WWII. Charlotte's Web, by E B White, now there's a fine book to share - every time there'll be some real toughy of the class who suddenly gets something in his eye! And there's more - lots more.

One of the perfect books for boys of all ages is How Tom Beat Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen, by Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake. This has the formidable Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong, who wears an iron hat, and the ever ebullient Tom who 'liked to fool around' (as well as extraordinarily convoluted creations for challenging and demanding types of supposedly character-building competitive games). However, as one of the criteria for this 'Riveting Reads' selection is 'recent', so old favourites are not included in the lists to follow. In a great many ways that is all to the good as this booklist may be useful as it stands but would also best be used to discover more books by the same writers and in the same vein as those featured and the many, many more available - if you want to pursue some of these then use your library and talk to your librarians!

It is this isolation of the child with his book, the private communication, the seed sowing, the awakening, that makes reading so important a part of growing.[10]

Young readers, and most especially those of primary school ages, have an advantageous facility in their approach to their reading. It is the young who with a total ease in focus and concentration have a highly developed reliance on the art of transfer. When a youngster gets embroiled right inside a story he or she can transfer themselves into the heart of things, into being that character, into facing that danger, into coping with the choices, into feeling themselves to be the one in the eye of everything. Boys and girls become more fully transferred into the story than readers of any other age because they alone have that freedom to opt-in wholly.

In later life a brilliant fiction might well make us feel that we empathise, it might create an authenticity in our minds due to the skill of the writer. Appreciation may well be fuller, richer, more intellectually aware but is never so wantonly liable to total immersion. However fully we understand and comprehend and empathise - however resolutely we can identify with a dilemma: when compared to the vivid unfettered imagination of childhood our facility to put ourselves inside the essence of a character is limited. The wondering young can take a character upon themselves, into themselves, can take themselves into the heart and soul of the character, fully and wholly, and let the writer's leadership guide them as it guides the story. Further to the actual story they are also able to transpose the me-character into wonderful, amazing and heroic resolutions of their own school or home or peer group problems.

I've long maintained that the enduring success of Enid Blyton's books is largely due to the obvious flaws in her writing. The almost two-dimensional stereotypical characters have such holes in the way they come across that there are gaps just waiting to be filled. It is the mind of the reader that leaps eagerly into the spaces and adds the third dimension with a self-image allied to the author's outline portrait of a character.  But such is the agility and uncluttered nature of a young mind and a young imagination that it will find a way of inserting itself personally into the tightest and most controlled of writing as well. Countless children have found that golden ticket as parallel beings with Charlie and have relished the protective friendship of a big giant with them, unseen by others, in their home streets. Even a popularly familiar visualisation cannot hinder the self-transference. How many mind-companions have really been right alongside Harry Potter as he ventures into risky corners? How many have seen themselves, rather than the apparently ingrained actor's image, as Harry, Ron or Hermione? It is in reading, not in watching, that this miracle of transfer is most complete: reading exerts the power with dramatic force.

What children read has been surveyed a number of times over the years. Whilst the specific titles have changed over time, and even from month to month, the priorities of children's, and boys', own choices alter remarkably little over the years. The report Children and Their Books[11] was a summary of a School's Council project from 1969-1974 and demonstrated the same predilection for media led tie-in titles as well as the tendency for girls to read more than boys. These generalised conclusions were repeated in the specifics of the detailed survey and findings of Children's Reading Choices [12] in 1999. Again in 2005 the survey Children and Young People's Reading Habits and Preferences[13] confirms the popularity of high profile tie-in productions and of non-fiction and other forms for boys with the statistics showing overall that girls read more than boys.

What is also clear from all the surveys and information is that boys' reading drops off more as they move through the secondary phase of schooling. That does not mean that tackling this tendency is more of a secondary than a primary priority. The learning experiences of the primary years are the foundation, the basis. For many people the habits and attitudes secured during these years dominate the whole of their education. Infant, junior and primary schools teach reading carefully and thoughtfully. The guidance through early stages, into short books, those with more than one chapter, and on to tackle longer books; teaching the uses of contents and indexing and other information retrieval skills, these are all part of developmental learning programmes. Where the reading of books, whole books, for sheer pleasure is given continuous constructive emphasis throughout all of the primary years there is more chance of more readers being made for life. Even back in 1993 an OFSTED report on Boys and English[14] noted that in instances where pupils' private reading was actively encouraged 'the distinctions between boys and girls...  were less sharp than usual'. That word 'actively' is open to so many degrees of interpretation of course. Full, enthusiastic and knowledgeable interaction between young readers and adults is what is needed, backed up by a well organised and well stocked school library.

The school library is a fundamental resource for the whole school and underpins the whole of the curriculum, teaching and learning. Early on in my primary teaching I became entranced by the way in which books could enrich children's learning. It was obvious that what was needed was loads of books, a wide range of books, books for fun as well as books for informing and stretching, books and more books. Then it rapidly became obvious that the most efficient way of organising the same books was if the whole school could access them. In fact in practical terms it made sound economic sense not to have most books shut away in classrooms: to have a book currently not being in use by one pupil or class readily available for another child or another class. A library - that's the answer!

Then I discovered that librarians really are extraordinarily helpful people and have an organisational knowledge and expertise essential for the working structure of even a modest school library. In those pre-millennium days in one school I created a library out of a disused boys' toilet area, in another a room in an attached but unused head-teacher's house was converted. I am convinced that every school should have a school library: that every child should have the right of access to books through a well stocked and well managed school library.

A good primary school library is a reservoir of books and other resources. As well as supplying individual readers with book loans it can be the source of collections of books to be temporarily based in classrooms in support of particular initiatives or curriculum projects.

A few primary schools do have a qualified librarian on the staff, but for every school library the support and expertise of a Schools Library Service, and a close liaison with the local public library, is crucial. Then it can fuel the needs of young readers, especially when those needs are being encouraged, developed and enlarged by actively involved teachers and assistants. A School Library Service, or a local library, can provide 'block-loans' of books to schools, usually for a term or on a longer basis,  to reinforce the school's own stock or to support special initiatives.

The school library is where, as a child, you make connections in your learning, connections that span the artificial boundaries of subject delineation, and where you develop those transferable skills of information literacy, analysis, evaluation and synthesis that form the bedrocks of lifelong learning. [15]

If there is no school library in the school, or a programme of improvement is part of the development plan then the SLA publication Practical Paperwork: Policy Making and Development Planning for the Primary School Library is the very best place to make a start.

Dual-language books may be a requirement for schools with pupils who do not have English as their first language. There are a few publishers who produce such editions and a title from the enterprising publisher Mantra Lingua features in the following list. This book is available in 33 versions, each with a different ISBN, with English and Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Panjabi, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Simplified Chinese, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Tamil, Twi, Urdu, Vietnamese and Yoruba. There is a fairly extensive list of more books in the publisher's catalogue.

Another publisher with a number of dual-language books, and with some particular focus on Turkish as well, is Milet. Frances Lincoln have published a few of their titles in editions with a couple of other languages. On the whole all of these tend to be picture books and offer terrific support. Whilst there's a certain amount of very specialised English as a foreign language material for adult learners there does appear to be a gap in terms of high quality books for older primary and into secondary aged youngsters. Some specialist importers are able to provide books in particular languages to compare alongside the standard English edition. Harry Potter is translated broadly and Michael Morpurgo's gripping First World War story War Horse, a recent dramatic success for the National Theatre, was republished a couple of years ago simultaneously in the UK, France and Germany on Remembrance Day. Cheval de Guerre is published by Gallimard and Schicksalsgefährten by Carlsen.

Role Models - young children are influenced by the adults around them as they grow, and especially by the adults of everyday contact.  Whenever I've talked to groups of parents about children and reading I've shared common concerns and desires for children's reading progress and development and then asked:

Even for those who read books avidly and regularly, do your children themselves see that happening as an everyday enthusiasm? I suspect most of us read the paper, a journal or magazine around the home in idle or relaxing moments and during the hours children are around. Reading books is by and large something secret that grown-ups do in bed!

Yet we all accept that youngsters, especially in the crucial very early years and throughout these primary school ages, are influenced by role models. Boys in particular react positively to the influences of the adult males with whom they have the most regular contact. But as adults, and perhaps particularly male adults, we rarely make a point of regularly reading a book where and when we might be observed by those children we influence. Of course that may simply not be possible with the patterns of daily employment - but there are always times in each week when we and our children share more time together or around each other.

We might express concerns about children and TV but they are more likely to see any of us habitually watching the box than reading a book!

Within primary schools generally female teaching staff outnumber the males so even with the best possible efforts male reader role models are less obvious. Perhaps there's a case here, where possible, for timetabled exchanges of male and female staff with a special focus on general reading and book related discussions and activities.

A 'taster' lesson can be a stimulating invitation to reading. Reading aloud carefully selected extracts from a number of books and then having those books ready, to hand, and available for the children works a treat. Knowing particular youngsters well means that titles and paragraphs to read may be unobtrusively targeted at certain readers - this can be a useful way of encouraging the reluctant. A device I've used towards the end of such sessions is to scatter the books I've been using around different group tables making sure certain books end up in front of certain pupils, often boys. Then they have some time for just dipping in, reading for themselves the post-it marked pages they've just heard, including proper names and so on, which also encourages some confidence in having a go at tackling the book.

Follow-up activities to the above might include any pair or group who have read the same book discussing it: devising 'selling points' to advertise the book to the rest. A task to jot down one word ('Just one, do not do any more!' is a request that is popular) to best describe each character. This does require analysis and reflection on what's been read and it can then be expanded to two words with the next extending the meaning of the first - and grow into a sentence. 

Boys are naturally gregarious, many are very conscious of the attitudes of their peers but - reading is an anti-social activity!

By that I mean that it tends to be a solitary occupation, unless others have read the same book. A good part of the Harry Potter phenomenon, and the success of Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider books, has to be the group awareness, sharing, chat, comparisons, and joint appreciation so that reading gains entry to the craze. A TV programme can be watched simultaneously by many and becomes something to talk about, as does a high profile games console program or many a film. A book could be the only copy available for borrowing and reading and so however bursting with overflowing enthusiasm a reader may be there won't be anyone to appreciate this fully unless such situations can be created in an informal manner.

'Wotifs' are a natural element in youngsters, and especially boys, as they chatter. Wotif he did this? Or that? Or an enormous one fell? Or that thing in the beginning happened just when...? Harry Potter stories have been extended and supplements created in playgrounds all over the country. In the classroom the Wotif can draw out details of the text and characters, incidents and story development as they inform new imagined happenings. This, of course, works best as a paired, or small group, activity, a social interaction arising out of the solitary experience. If one person only has read a book then he becomes the focus, he needs to effectively outline things for the others and he might be the one to lead discussions and fun in coming up with more Wotifs.

One way of sharing which does have a special appeal for boys because of the involvement of technology is through audio. A recorded extract chosen and read by the youngster as a 'taster' can work as both entertainment and information for others. Recording onto a computer, adding a choice of music if possible, means that that boy's effort and enjoyment is there, available to be reheard as and when wanted. The reader can themselves become 'cool' from introducing a book others enjoy.

Whenever I've planned on making use of a story, or extract, in learning activities I always would make a point of reading the text aloud some days beforehand. Although there's much learning value to be explored around such stimuli I've always felt uneasy about using good imaginative writing just to be a teaching tool. The children should have a chance to just enjoy it for its own sake too.

It really can be astonishing to witness the huge effort some apparently reluctant or less able, less actively experienced, reader can make to tackle something of real interest. I know one lad for whom story, as from a book unless he was listening to it, was anathema but when he was confronted with books on how certain machines work he laboured intensely to get a grasp of things. There's another whose apparent problems in reading worried concerned adults, both professional and parents. In fact he could manage reasonably well but was so attuned to failing that his demonstration of his ability, his reading aloud to anyone, stumbled falteringly. When he was left alone in a school office with a running audio-recorder, the reading was far more fluent. Each individual is just that, an individual, and generalisations about what's best for a certain age / interest do not necessarily apply. It cannot be emphasised enough, or repeated too often, that there is no substitute for knowing your youngsters and for knowing something of the books you want them to read.

Reading aloud to children is so important. From this they can gain at an early age the wonder of words and the magic that books, stories, can generate. Reading aloud in class can evoke the most intense shared pleasure, can lead to superb informed discussions and can even act as a focussing aid when minds are reeling from some other influence. Five minutes of story after a windy playtime can save lots of precious minutes in concentration for following lessons and improve the effectiveness of teaching no end.

A personal quirk of mine was always to wonder why story has been traditionally only instituted as a way of ending the day: the most superb way of ending the day. But, it is just as they're all - every one - so still, so determinedly paying attention, totally focussed; and what do we do with that precious moment? We announce 'Put your chairs up and go home', or whatever is customary. Perhaps there are more creative, more constructive ways of using story-time and benefiting from the sense of shared togetherness it can generate.

Hearing stories read aloud teaches as well as entertains. It can show how books work, how those organised marks on the pages can translate into funny, exciting, sad, happy emotions: can take us down rabbit holes or up above the stratosphere. The crucial simplicity of basic left to right order on each line, the turning of one page after another, and other essential understanding of the mechanics of words out of books can be seen and understood from hearing, and watching, and enjoying the book being read aloud.

All children should be told stories at home and in school. The lack of them is one of the primary deprivations children can suffer.[16]

Often reading aloud to children does tend to diminish and cease at home, and in school, as youngsters grow older and might be supposed to be reading for themselves. It really should be continued, it can open doors to books which might not have otherwise been chosen. It can introduce characters and situations and it can create an empathy in a manner little else achieves. And in school shared fiction can support curriculum areas in mind expanding ways, extending and enlarging on a period of history, a scientific discovery, a country, a natural disaster, a sport. If the right book is to hand so much enrichment to learning can be gained from that extra dimension. For boys in particular, the group who statistics show go off habitual book reading, the relevance of enjoying books linked to some purposeful understanding can make all the difference.

The titles in the following annotations do not make up any sort of definitive list. More books from the last two years could easily have been included but there are constraints, not the least of which being the time involved. It would certainly be relatively easy to expand the number of books for the older or more competent readers as the overlap with those for the secondary level means there are a great many such titles being published. What is glaringly obvious is the comparatively small number of what might be called serious and involving novels for the slightly younger age group. In the books for 8s and 9s for example there are lots of really well written and well constructed fun books that will greatly assist in making and keeping readers. But there are so few with any more serious intent and demanding those wholesale emotional responses of the reader which amount to real, deep and fully satisfying reads.

We must learn to judge the occasion before recommending a book to children: its possibilities, "mood", atmosphere. We must be ready to be flexible in our work, seizing a moment when it is ripe for introducing a book, and altering our methods to suit.[17]

In recommending books to individual readers there is absolutely no substitute for being familiar with the youngster's own interests and abilities.

Most regular, repeated, success in getting children and books to meld perfectly together comes from knowing both the youngsters and the books really well.

In the end, adults, however well-intentioned, have to retire from the scene and leave the young to those who really teach them to read, the gifted writers who choose them for their audience.[18]

The reader's greatest pleasure: the silence after the story has been read.[19]

Footnotes

  1. http://www.bookahead.org.uk/ [ ↑ ]
  2. http://www.boysintobooks.co.uk/ [ ↑ ]
  3. Jacqueline Kennedy. [ ↑ ]
  4. Ann Lazim and Sue Ellis (edited by Myra Barrs). Simply the Best: Books for Children. CLPE, 2003 [ ↑ ]
  5. Brian Best and Will Thomas. The Creative Teaching and Learning Toolkit. Continuum, 2007. [ ↑ ]
  6. Lyn Overall and Margaret Sangster. Primary Teacher's Handbook. Continuum, 2007. [ ↑ ]
  7. Betty Carter, writing in The Horn Book Magazine, November – December 2001. (Unbuilding is an exploded views-style book.) [ ↑ ]
  8. Susan Elkin. Ideas in Action: Encouraging Reading. Continuum, 2007. [ ↑ ]
  9. Copyright © Michael Day. [ ↑ ]
  10. Elaine Moss writing in Signal 19, January 1971. [ ↑ ]
  11. Frank Whitehead. Children and Their Books 1969–1974. Schools Council, 1979. [ ↑ ]
  12. Christine Hall and Martin Coles. Children's Reading Choices. Routledge, 1999. [ ↑ ]
  13. National Literacy Trust. Children and Young People's Reading Habits. NLT, 2005. [ ↑ ]
  14. Ofsted. Boys and English. HMSO, 1993. [ ↑ ]
  15. Mike Butler, Principal of Djanogly City Academy, Nottingham. The School Librarian Vol 55 No3, p120. [ ↑ ]
  16. Robert Leeson, writing in Signal 30, September 1979. [ ↑ ]
  17. Aidan Chambers. Introducing Books to Children, 1973. [ ↑ ]
  18. From the closing paragraphs of Learning to Read by Margaret Meek, 1982. [ ↑ ]
  19. Daniel Pennac, translated by Sarah Adams. The Rights of the Reader, 2006. [ ↑ ]

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