The portal www.boysandbooks.de was designed for mediators of literature and reading promoters at schools, libraries, media and in the book industry but also for parents. It offers a platform for all who are active or want to become active in projects promoting the reading of books. It combines academic and practical findings and makes them accessible for all users. Reading recommendations are supplemented with reading samples, content summaries, book reviews and information on reading promotion. The page offers book recommendations for different age groups which were specifically selected for children and adolescents with poor reading skills or who read little or have lost interest in books.
“Reading must not be reduced to the basic functional skill, the deciphering of words, sentences and short texts for everyday use or in a school context.”, warns Brendel-Perpina. She continues to say that frequent readers had advantages in all important fields of development: They have a better social and communication behavior and a more advanced dialog capability and ability to handle conflicts and participate in cultural offers and societal activities more often.
Twice a year, the website issues an overview of recent top publications for boys from elementary school age. In general, the book suggestions selected by an expert jury are tailored to the needs of “literature beginners”. All recommendations are based on criteria for different genres in combination with reading research findings on gender specific genre preferences and criteria such as comprehensibility and motivating design and layout of texts. Boys are particularly interested in adventure novels, comical antihero fiction and fantasy but also crime fiction, detective and horror stories as well as comics and graphic novels.
The team surrounding Brendel-Perpina is working together with students to find out to what extent the recommended books are actually accepted and read by the young readers. In the context of seminars on gender-sensitive reading promotion, students analyze the top titles and interview boys who have read these books. This combines the two perspectives of literary studies and social sciences and enables the development new recommendations for reading promotion measures.