Deb­bie Ja­cob

I re­cent­ly came across a fright­en­ing ar­ti­cle pub­lished by the US?Na­tion­al Chil­dren's Book and Lit­er­a­cy Al­liance. The ar­ti­cle pre­sent­ed the re­sults of a Read­ing at Risk sur­vey done by the Na­tion­al En­dow­ment for the Arts and chart­ed the dra­mat­ic de­cline of read­ing in young adults in the US over the last 20 years. There is no rea­son to be­lieve that we have fared any bet­ter with this group of read­ers.

Young adult is a murky catch­phrase used in aca­d­e­m­ic and li­brary cir­cles. It's ba­si­cal­ly is a broad net cat­e­goris­ing read­ers who have grad­u­at­ed from pic­ture books and be­gin­ning chap­ter books, but are not yet ready for adult read­ing. It can mean read­ers from 12 to 18. Some­times read­ers up to 21 are called young adults and some peo­ple push the be­gin­ning of YA read­ers to 14. In any case, it is that no-man's land be­tween chil­dren's lit­er­a­ture and adult lit­er­a­ture.

The ar­ti­cle claimed that the gen­der gap in read­ing by young adults has widened con­sid­er­ably. In over­all book read­ing, young women fell from 63 per cent to 59 per cent; young men dropped from 55 per cent to 43 per cent. This drop in read­ing could clear­ly be seen in aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance. Girls and young women scored con­sis­tent­ly high­er in lit­er­a­cy skills as­sess­ments than their male peers at every grade lev­el.

"Since the great­est pred­i­ca­tor of aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess for any in­di­vid­ual is pro­fi­cien­cy in read­ing and writ­ing skills, it means that boys are at a con­sid­er­able dis­ad­van­tage," the ar­ti­cle said. The study went on to re­mind us of what we all know: "The more stu­dents read, the bet­ter their vo­cab­u­lar­ies and com­pre­hen­sion skills, the more they will be able to write and com­mu­ni­cate, the more they will learn and grow in crit­i­cal and cre­ative think­ing skills.

Boys need to read mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers, books of non­fic­tion and fic­tion, and they need to do more than the skim­ming many boys en­gage in on the In­ter­net. "Much of the ma­te­r­i­al on the In­ter­net, al­though it is tech­ni­cal­ly read­ing ma­te­r­i­al, does not pro­vide strong con­tent or com­pre­hen­sive sub­stance.

Of­ten, it is not mon­i­tored and has no qual­i­ty stan­dards. It's great for over­all breadth, but not for in-depth read­ing. And it is on­ly through con­sis­tent in-depth read­ing that young peo­ple can de­vel­op the crit­i­cal and cre­ative think­ing skills they will need to en­rich their per­son­al lives, com­pete suc­cess­ful­ly in the work­place, and be­come re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens."

For young adult read­ers search­ing for au­thors they might like, the US?Na­tion­al Book Awards sug­gests Guys Write For Guys Read: Boys' Fa­vorite Au­thors Write About Be­ing Boys, com­piled by Jon Sci­esz­ka, most fa­mous for his his­tor­i­cal fic­tion in the Time Warp se­ries, a pop­u­lar read for el­e­men­tary stu­dents (www.guys­read.com). Here are some books I sug­gest for young adult read­ers.

1. Per­cy Jack­son and the Olympians (be­gin­ning with the Light­ning Thief) by Rick Ri­or­dan-a fast-paced read with Greek mythol­o­gy

2. The Red Pyra­mid by Rick Ri­or­dan-an ex­cit­ing read with Egypt­ian mythol­o­gy

3. Max­i­mum Ride by James Pat­ter­son-a thriller by an au­thor much re­spect­ed by adults

4. 39 Clues by var­i­ous au­thors-a de­tec­tive se­ries that will build an­a­lyt­i­cal skills

5. The Dark Tow­er by Stephen King-Roland, a gun­slinger of the fu­ture, finds him­self back in the 1980s in a strug­gle of good over evil

Non-fic­tion

1. The Boy Who Har­nessed the Wind: Cre­at­ing Cur­rents of Elec­tric­i­ty and Hope-an in­spir­ing sto­ry of a poor boy in Africa who helped his vil­lage to get elec­tric­i­ty

2. A Long Way Gone: Mem­oirs of a Boy Sol­dier by Ish­mael Beah-the sto­ry of a boy sol­dier in Sier­ra Leone

3. Es­cape! The Sto­ry of the Great Hou­di­ni by Sid Fleish­man-the sto­ry of the great ma­gi­cian.

Graph­ic nov­els are pop­u­lar among teenagers. Don't think less of these books be­cause of their com­ic-book style. They are great for that "vi­su­al" read­er who needs to de­vel­op a va­ri­ety of lit­er­a­cy skills.

1. Ug: Boy Ge­nius of the Stone Age and His Search for Soft Trousers by Ray­mond Brig­gs

2. The Ad­ven­tures of Spar­row­boy by Bri­an Pinkney

3. Mas­ter Man: A Tall Tale of Nige­ria by Aaron Shep­ard, il­lus­trat­ed by David Wis­niews­ki

4. The In­ven­tion of Hugo Cabret by Bri­an Selznick

5. Amer­i­can Born Chi­nese by Gene Lu­en Yang

Caribbean books for Young Adults

1. The Is­land Fic­tion se­ries, in­clud­ing The Chal­ice Project by Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni-a sci-fi sto­ry set in Ja­maica and Trinidad, and Time Swim­mer by Ger­ald Haus­man, a Caribbean ver­sion of the Odyssey

2. Alon­so and the Drug Baron by Evan Jones-a side-split­ting com­e­dy set in Ja­maica for old­er young adult read­ers

3. Miguel Street by VS Naipaul-a Trinida­di­an clas­sic!

4. Bold­ly the Trips and Mys­te­ri­ous the Trips by Roy Galt-ad­ven­tures set in Trinidad

It is im­por­tant to catch young read­ers and nur­ture an in­ter­est in read­ing through this cru­cial young adult stage. It can be done with in­ter­est­ing books that cap­ture young read­ers' at­ten­tion and ad­dress their prob­lems and con­cerns.