Riveting Reads: Boys into Books 11-14

by Jim Knight MP, Minister for Schools and 14-19 Learners

Reading opens doors; reading expands horizons; reading enriches lives. That’s true for adults, and it’s even truer for young people.  Anything which gets children reading is to be welcomed without reservation.

Reading isn’t confined to books – we are bombarded daily with written words; in fact often we face information overload.  But books are pretty much essential to our experience of reading for pleasure.  A book is quite different from a newspaper, a magazine, a poster or an advertisement.   A book is not like a text message, nor a quick email.  You can get books on the internet, but few people – adults or children – would choose to read an extended piece of writing on a computer screen.  There is something uniquely personal and satisfying about a book.  You can curl up with it, alone even in a public place.  You can hold it in your hands and turn the pages.  You can feel the sense of beginning, middle and ending of a story, through the pages read and the others still to go.

Many children read books avidly, from the moment they acquire the skill.  But it has to be admitted that there are more girls in this category than boys.  There is a close link between reading and overall achievement at school.  This is part of the reason why, sadly, boys tend to do less well than girls in English and other subjects which depend on literacy.

Hence I am delighted to welcome the School Library Association’s new list of Riveting Reads, targeted at teenage boys.  The books have been selected to have a very wide appeal.  They include old and new classics – fact and fiction – and every genre and style of writing imaginable. I love the headings, which form a sort of alphabetical instruction to boys to open up their minds to new ideas:

Boggle, discover, experiment, explore, fear, go wild, investigate, laugh...

ending up with:

play, survive, train.

That list makes a pretty good statement of what a good education should encourage!

I believe there is something here which will appeal to every boy – and I hasten to add, also to very many girls.  I enjoyed reading the list, with its crisp, fresh summaries, and was immediately tempted to read several items myself.  

But now it’s over to schools, parents and above all young people themselves to pick out the books with the strongest appeal.  The Government is supporting the SLA to enable publicly-funded secondary schools to get a selection of twenty of these titles free for their library – and of course schools and parents can buy others for themselves.

Thank you to the SLA, and a warm welcome to Boys Into Books.

Jim Knight MP
Minister for Schools and 14-19 Learners
Department for Education and Skills