“Spiderman is not for Babies” (Peter, 4 years): The Boys and Reading Problem from the Perspective of the Boys Themselves

It used to be the girls who were thought to be the problem. Until recently, both research and practice in fields like education and library and information science were more interested in uncovering and addressing the unfair, unequal treatment of girls. But times have changed. Everyone agrees that girls have improved on almost all performance indicators at school while boys have not. This presentation reports on an interview study with 43 Canadian boys (4 to 12 years old) which captured the boys’ own perspectives on their reading. Results indicate that boys are reading, but their preferred reading materials (e.g., nonfiction, comic books, and game manuals) are not those usually privileged by librarians, teachers and parents.