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“Teenage boys are “stuck” reading primary school books such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid, while girls their age are moving on to a wider range of novels, according to a new study.
Among the boys aged 11 to 14 who were surveyed, eight of the 10 most read books were from Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Girls’ reading was spread across a wider range of authors and genres including Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper, Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.
The findings, published in the annual What Kids Are Reading report by the education technology company Renaissance, demonstrate the extent to which boys’ and girls’ reading choices “pull apart” by the time they reach key stage 3.
The report analysed more than 23m reading quizzes completed by almost 1.1 million children in schools across the UK and Ireland during the 2024-25 academic year.
Researchers suggest the pattern reflects broader differences in reading habits outside school. Previous research by the National Literacy Trust found that by ages 14 to 16, less than 10% of boys read daily in their spare time compared with 18% of girls.”