Mark Dolliver's Takes: Reading for Fun?

Reading for fun? Huh?

While Harry Potter has made reading for pleasure a respectable activity for boys, a gender gap remains in enthusiasm for books unconnected to school work. The chart here, excerpting a Weekly Reader Research survey, shows how the disparity widens as kids move into their teen years. It’s wider still if you focus on the number of kids who rated reading for fun a 10 on the scale of 1 to 10. Among 6-9-year-olds, 37 percent of girls and 27 percent of boys gave reading this score.