Boys turn off to reading in middle school: Are books too girly?

Boys are less likely to read books for fun as their female classmates. It's not just boys are more likely to struggle with reading, suggests Sophia Nguyen in The Atlantic. If boys think reading is for girls, they have have a point.

Most middle-school authors are female, and so are their readers, she writes. Tweens can find lots of contemporary books with female heroines, fewer with male heroes.

Afoma Umesi, who curates literary guides for her Reading Middle Grade website, analyzed books released in 2026 and found "girl protagonists outnumbered boys by a ratio of 2 to 1," writes Nguyen. It was more than 3 to 1 in some categories, such as realistic fiction and mystery.

"The “middle grade” period, spanning ages 8 to 12, is thought to be the crucial moment when kids do—or don’t — become lifelong readers," she writes. The statistics are grim. "From 1984 to 2025, according to federal surveys, the share of 13-year-olds who said that they never or hardly ever pick up a book for fun more than tripled." Those non-readers are disproportionately boys.

There are plenty of older books, such as Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl series, with male protagonists. "Series such as Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid still reign supreme on the best-seller lists," Nguyen writes. Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet and its sequels, along with the I Survived series are very popular.

However, today's students have a hard time with older books, middle-school librarian Laura Gardner told Nguyen. They don't read as well as when she started her career 17 years ago, and have shorter attention spans. Even high achievers demand fast-moving, action-filled plots.

I read everything when I was that age. I had no trouble imagining myself into Treasure Island or Huckleberry Finn or A Wrinkle in Time or Ivanhoe. The rule was that girls would read books with male heroes -- or not have many books to read. Boys would not read "girls' books." Apparently, that's still the case.

I didn't expect to be "represented" in books. A book about someone like me would have been boring. I wanted to read about other times, other places and people with far more exciting lives.

Nguyen ends with a book seller trying to persuade boys to try a book with a gender-ambiguous (but actually female) dragon. Well, it's a dragon.

You can check out Umesi's 31 books 10-year-old boys love and 20 books for eighth-grade boys. They may be popular, but they don't seem very challenging.

Brett and Kate McKay recommend the 50 best books for boys and young men on their Art of Manliness blog. It's an eclectic list ranging from adventure, sports and sci-fi to classics such as The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, David Copperfield and To Kill a Mockingbird. There's one crossover from Umesi's eighth-grade list, Neil Shusterman's dystopian Scythe.