Welcome to Boys Do Read.  Working in libraries and seeing so many great books for teen boys,  we thought we'd post some of our favorites here.  

Oh, wait.

The teen book publishing industry continues to gain momentum, but only a tiny fraction of teen books actually appeal to boys.  With such a small selection to choose from, we are in danger of losing the boys Percy Jackson and Greg Heffley have made into readers.  Rather than lamenting the inequality of the current publishing trends, we need to rethink teen collection development at our libraries.  

We want to start a conversation and share ideas on how to look beyond the teen books that are available and offer alternatives for our male readers, and we had a room-full of people who were just as concerned and as enthusiastic about the topic as we are.   

There are a lot of good books for teen boys, they just aren't all in the YA section.  We aren't restricting ourselves to YA books; we want teen boys to read just like everyone else, and we are willing to give them whatever it takes.  This might mean giving them adult novels, non-fiction, novelty books, whatever.

This blog started as a presentation we did for the 2011 British Columbia Library Association Conference. The session was called What's a Boy to Read? Building a Teen Collection for Boys in a Myriad of Period Costumes, Shampoo Ad Models and Love-Sick Vampires.