Teenage boys are”stuck “checking out primary school books such as Journal of a Wimpy Kid, while women their age are moving on to a broader range of novels, according to a new study.Among the boys aged 11 to 14 who were surveyed, eight of the 10 most read books were from Jeff Kinney’s Journal of a Wimpy Kid series. Girls’reading was spread throughout a larger range of authors and genres including Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper, Holly Jackson’s An Excellent Girl’s Guide to Murder and Suzanne Collins’The Appetite Games.The findings, released in the annual What Kids Are Reading report by the education innovation company Renaissance, demonstrate the degree to which young boys’and ladies’reading options “pull apart” by the time they reach key stage 3. The report evaluated more than 23m reading quizzes completed by nearly 1.1 million
children in schools throughout the UK and Ireland throughout the 2024-25 academic year.Researchers recommend the pattern reflects more comprehensive differences in reading routines outside school. Previous research by the
National Literacy Trust found that by ages 14 to 16, less than 10%of boys read daily in their spare time compared with 18 %of girls.Dedicated reading time at school typically decreases greatly after primary education. A separate Renaissance study discovered that just 28%of secondary schools set aside a minimum of 15 minutes a day for reading, compared with 62%of primary schools.Bernadetta Brzyska, Renaissance’s head of research, stated:”Children checked out best when they read what they love … This is not an argument versus popular series. Familiar authors and box-set fiction pull reluctant readers in.
The question is what comes next. Students who are guided towards new authors and harder books carry on reading while those left on the very same series tend to stall. “The report also discovered that pupils showed more powerful comprehension when reading books they had chosen themselves, scoring approximately 92%on quizzes about their preferred titles compared to 76 %throughout all books.Martin Galway, head of expert learning and collaborations at the National Literacy Trust, said:”The growing gap we see in secondary school, particularly for teenage boys, is a clear call to action. A lot of young people are’stuck ‘or disengaging from checking out altogether, frequently
since they have actually not yet discovered books that feel relevant, accessible or motivating.”The findings come throughout the federal government’s National Year of Reading project, which has actually recognized teenage boys as one of the groups most in need of support after reading satisfaction among kids fell to its least expensive level on record last year.Most-read books in years 7 to 9: boys 1. Journal of a Wimpy Kid 2. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Vacation 3. Harry
Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone 4. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules 5. Journal of a Wimpy Kid: The Final Stroke 6. Journal of a Wimpy Kid: Canine Days 7. Journal of a Wimpy Kid: No Brainer 8. Journal of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Reality 9.
Journal of a Wimpy Kid: The Disaster 10. The Appetite Games Most-read books in years 7 to 9: girls 1. Harry Potter and the Theorist’s Stone
2. The Hunger Games 3. Heartstopper Volume 1 4. An Excellent Girl’s Guide to Murder 5. The Incredibly Humiliating Life of Lottie Brooks 6. Heartstopper Volume 2 7. Journal of a Wimpy Kid 8. The Catastrophic Friendship Stops Working of Lottie Brooks 9. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Tricks
10. Lottie Brooks’s Totally Devastating School
Trip