Boys and books: How do you get them together?

The boys yell as a classmate swings a broom handle wildly in the air.

When one boy connects with the tennis ball and runs around the makeshift bases, another reaches under a car in the parking lot to retrieve the ball.

Gym class? Boys blowing off steam after school? No, these boys are participating in the second year of the Boys' Book Club at Scott Highlands Middle School in Apple Valley. After discussing a book about baseball, they trekked outside and learned how to play stickball.

Across the metro area, schools, libraries and even the juvenile justice system are looking into why boys fall behind girls when it comes to reading test scores and how they might kindle a love of reading in the boys. In some cases, a decreasing number of male teachers has led to situations where female teachers are left searching for books they think boys will like -- about gross stuff, action, sports and creepy-crawlies.

The female teachers also try to connect the boys with male reading mentors.

"We've done a wonderful job keeping a secret from kids about how much fun we have reading," said Kathleen Baxter, a retired Anoka County librarian and national expert on what makes boys read -- or choose not to. "Reading what you have to read is not how you become a reader. ... Let them read what they want."

In Minnesota, reading tests this year show that 24 percent of eighth-grade boys read below a basic achievement level, compared with only 15 percent of girls.

Educators "are realizing how important it is that these boys get started reading, even if it takes the gross or it takes the ugly," said Maryellen Gregoire of Stone Arch Books, a Minnesota publisher that focuses on underperforming readers. "We should do whatever it takes."

Developing reading mentors

Five eighth-grade boys sit in a classroom at Scott Highlands Middle School, talking about "Heat" by Mike Lupica.

The book club, said eighth-grader Eric Hanson, "gives me a purpose to read. If I just read [the book] on my own, I miss a big part of what the book is about. I like to hear other people's opinions."

According to Education Minnesota, the teachers' union, the percentage of male teachers in Minnesota has decreased from 43 percent in 1980 to 29 percent in 2005. That's why finding books for boys is a problem.

Female teachers and librarians don't gravitate toward the books that boys like, which Baxter says are about "disasters, wild animals, spies, machines, dinosaurs, and creepy-crawly things."

Showing boys male reading role models also helps catch boys' interest. In Apple Valley, two female teachers host the book club, but each month a different male teacher reads to the club.

Theresa Back, one of the female teachers that started the club, said that boys interact well with the male leaders. "We just didn't have the 'boy connection,' " she said about the female teachers.

In Hennepin County, a "Guys Read" program run by the library system caters to boys by helping them find a community of boy readers. And according to research performed by the University of Minnesota, more than 80 percent of participants say the program makes them likely to read even more in the future.

But the "Guys Read" program tends to appeal to boys who already are avid readers, said David O'Brien, a professor of literacy education at the university. O'Brien said about 73 percent of boys in the program already like to read.

"We need to figure out a way to attract more boys who fit the picture of boys that don't read," he said.

Fred LaFleur has an "insatiable appetite" for reading everything he can get his hands on.

LaFleur, Hennepin County's deputy county administrator for criminal justice, says that reading is a cornerstone in his life, and years ago he thought about bringing it to the correctional system so "these guys could have something to do with their kids other than yell at them when they were in the visiting room."

At the county's juvenile facilities, boys are introduced to as much reading material as possible to help them develop reading and writing skills, LaFleur said. In the adult facilities, men are taught to read children's books so they can read them to their children.

"We just assume that everybody in this culture embraces and values education," LaFleur said, "but the vast majority of people we work with really haven't had positive experiences with educational institutions."

The emphasis on reading isn't meant to be a rehabilitation program, LaFleur said, but a way to teach men and boys about the joys of reading and foster interesting discussions that wouldn't happen if they were just watching TV.

"It overwhelmed [the men] with joy, because all of a sudden they were communicating" with their children, he said. "In their minds, they were these sort of heroes to their children, and they had their attention, because they were sharing these stories with them."

Emily Johns • 612-673-7460