In late July 2008, Oscar, our six year-old son, decided reading wasn’t for him. I was mortified. He adores books and loves being read to, but when he was given a school reader to start learning to read he tossed it aside saying, “This is boring.” And who was I to argue? I actually agreed with him. It made me yawn too.
I couldn’t believe that school readers looked like they did when I was at school (which was some time around the Stone Age). The carefully structured text describing how mum cleans, cooks, washes and jogs (and I won’t bore you with the other equally exciting chores of the modern-day mum) might be great for teaching reading skills, but where is the excitement? Where is the engrossing storyline? Where are the wonderfully engaging illustrations? Where are the cool characters?
All we get to see are photos of a very tired looking mum wearing ill-fitting tracksuit pants and sporting a bad 80s perm. It’s not the sort of stuff that gets a six year-old boy going — or an equally tired mum who’s trying to excitedly read her son’s monotonous school reader.
“Surely there’s some cool readers for boys learning to read out there,” I lamented to anyone who would listen. So I started searching, and searching, and searching…
After many chats with Oscar’s teachers, numerous trips to our public libraries, more than a few chats with other mums, and a lot of digging around the ‘net, I discovered that if exciting readers for young boys existed, that I couldn’t find them. What a crime to all young boys. And particularly so when you take into account the considerable research showing that boys are more likely than girls to be reluctant readers and that they generally fall behind their female peers in school (and more on that research later).
What I did find was some great stuff for older boys. Paul Jennings’s work is already a favourite in our family and his recently published Rascal series are perfect for boys who are more fluent readers. Andy Griffiths is doing a great job at grossing-out our older boys and the Tashi books are capturing our young boys’ imaginations. But—and here’s the but—my six year-old can’t read any of these books. The text is too complex and aimed at the older, more advanced reader. Our young boys starting out on the reading journey need to experience reading success as well as engaging stories.
So this year, as Oscar settles into grade one, we are working on finding good books for him to get into. School readers are still a daily requirement. Oscar thinks some of them are OK—like the ones that have someone fishing or a go-kart on the front cover. He still thinks many of them are boring. We keep up our enthusiasm, go slowly, and find other ways to keep him interested in books and in learning to read. I’ll let you know what some of those things are in my next post.
Until then, happy reading with your little fellows!
