GUYS READ is a web-based nonprofit
literacy initiative for boys founded by Jon Scieszka.
It is a sponsored program of the New York Foundation
for the Arts.
Statistics and anecdotal evidence shows that boys
are having trouble reading. The basic idea of GUYS
READ is that boys can be motivated to read by connecting
with texts they will want to read.
What boys like to read is not often the same as what
they are required to read. Literary fiction is the
mainstay of required school reading. Yet boys often
prefer non-fiction, humor, information, comics/graphic
novels, and more humor.
The GUYS READ website ( funded by Jon Scieszka, the
generous contributions of writers and illustrators
to the GUYS WRITE FOR GUYS READ anthology, and the
publisher Penguin Putnam) is designed to raise public
awareness of the problem of boys’ literacy, and
to offer boys reading they will enjoy.
The website is built in partnership with Amazon to
take advantage of the data of millions of reading
recommendations. The recommendations are not value
judgements about what is “great literature.”
They are more effectively recommendations based on
what other guys have liked.
Jon Scieszka thought of the idea of GUYS READ after
growing up with five brothers, teaching elementary
school for ten years, raising a daughter and son,
and writing books for kids for the last fifteen years.
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