Children find pleasure elsewhere, as a new landmark study shows, writes Susan Wyndham. That's what we expect of teenagers, she says, and why many of them lose interest in reading.
Books stop being fun.
As founder and manager of the Australian Centre for Youth Literature in Melbourne, Nieuwenhuizen has commissioned the first detailed research into attitudes of young Australians to reading for pleasure. I don't think we should be too evangelical and say everyone should be a reader. But if we focus on those who just need a nudge and shift their perceptions towards it being okay to be a reader, then the hard cases will come across. Most worrying is the finding that while 45 per cent of primary school students enjoy reading, read frequently and see reading in a positive light, only 24 per cent of secondary students are as enthusiastic. Older boys are more likely than girls to find reading boring and nerdy.