Reading is an unwelcome task for some children during the summer. School is out, the sun stays up late, and there’s a new action movie every weekend. The only people reading at this time of year are those who like it.

Those faithful, as it turns out, are mostly female. It’s accepted wisdom in both educational and publishing circles that girls read for pleasure at far higher rates than boys. And the disparity – at least where fiction-reading is concerned – follows children as they age: Last year, the National Endowment for the Arts announced in “Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America” that 53% of women regularly read novels or short stories, while only 36% of men do.

Jon Scieszka, the Park Slope author of the children’s book “The Stinky Cheese Man” and a former elementary school teacher, thinks he has an answer to the problem of boys’ indifference to books. The key is “to realize that humor is okay, that graphic novels are a kind of reading, and that nonfiction is reading, which teachers in school definitely don’t value as real reading.”

Mr. Scieszka edited the anthology “Guys Write for Guys Read” (Viking, $16.99, 272 pages), published this spring, which could become a template for a new kind of Laddie Lit. Most of the book’s 92 bite-size contributions fulfill at least one of Mr. Scieszka’s criteria for boy-friendliness: Many are true (if embellished), 23 are illustrations, and the silliness quotient is high. There’s Neil Gaiman on the perils of chewing toffee in class, Gary Paulsen on the irresistibility of urinating on an electric fence, and Stephen King on farts.

The accompanying Web site, www.guysread.com, has been online since 2002. Users can type in a favorite author, book, or topic and get a long list of recommended books that are proven boy favorites, from Douglas Adams to Paul O. Zelinsky.

In looking at the problem of why many boys don’t read for pleasure, experts have examined a number of factors. Is the problem with boys? They take longer than girls to develop verbal skills, so more of them are discouraged by classroom reading assignments that are above their heads. Their role models? The vast majority of librarians and elementary school teachers are women, so many boys don’t see reading modeled as a masculine pursuit. “We’re always telling kids how important reading and writing is, but when they look around, it’s all women doing it. We tell them one thing and show them another,” said Mr. Scieszka, who taught for 10 years at Manhattan’s Day School (now the Trevor Day School).

But perhaps the most popular explanation for boys’ lack of enthusiasm is that most 21st century classrooms simply are not stocked with the right books.

“Guys Write” contributor Mo Willems said: “I think that what it is, is that boys are … not given cool books.” Referring to his Caldecott Award-winning book “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus,” he added, “Do girls like to yell at the top of their lungs at a pigeon in the library? Of course! It’s totally punk rock. But girls would also like to read a sweet story.”

The coordinator of children’s services at the New York Public Library, Margaret Tice, agreed that girls are not only more open to differences in tone, they’re also drawn to a wider variety of protagonists. “The general rule of thumb is that girls will read about boys but that boys won’t read about girls. Not always, but generally,” she said. Ms. Tice added that many boys don’t respond to the staples of juvenile fiction that have long absorbed girls. “If you take the canon of good children’s literature, that’s not a wide enough range to meet their needs.”

It’s not just the classics. Many junior-high English classes are devoted largely to the so-called “problem novel,” in which children confront family issues such as divorce, alcoholism, and teenage pregnancy. Some resemble downbeat soap operas, and many boys are bored by them. In a March column in support of single-sex education, the editor of National Review, Rich Lowry, wrote: “There is no better way to turn a generation of boys against reading than to assign them ‘Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret,'” referring to the Judy Blume novel that’s been popular with girls for decades.

The “Guys Read” philosophy is that there’s no reason to be a snob about what children read: All words are good words. If a boy wants to curl up with Spider-Man instead of “Anne of Green Gables,” or R.L. Stine’s scary stories instead of “Alice in Wonderland,” he should be encouraged to do so.

Some adults balk at this approach. The popular “Captain Underpants” series by “Guys Write” contributor Dav Pilkey, for example, includes crude humor and intentional misspellings, which trouble some parents and educators. A poll on Scholastic’s Web page promoting the series, which stars two unruly boys and an under-dressed superhero, reports that 23% of teachers say the books don’t belong in school. Last year, a Connecticut elementary school pulled the books from the shelves, and the series appears on the American Library Association’s 2004 top 10 list of “Most Frequently Challenged Books.”

Still, the New York Public Library stocks the series without hesitation. Ms. Tice said: “The ‘Captain Underpants’ books use words and expressions that boys actually use, and have a sense of humor about farts and body parts that appeal to boys. But it’s very well done, so I would put ‘Captain Underpants’ in the category of good popular fiction.”

For parents of boys whose summer breaks are stretching into three-month-long vacations from “real” reading, this can be taken as good news. That copy of “Captain Underpants” – or that Captain America comic book – is building a love of reading in its own way.

“The difference between adults and children is that the children are shorter, not stupider,” Mr. Willems said. “If you look at men, men read magazines that have lots of pictures and they read nonfiction. Why would it be different for boys?”

Reading for Boys
Books by Contributors to ‘Guys Write for Guys Read’

FOR YOUNGER BOYS

Tedd Arnold, “No Jumping on the Bed” (Dial Books)
Daniel Pinkwater, “At the Hotel Larry” (Marshall Cavendish Corporation)
Tony DiTerlizzi, “Jimmy Zangwow’s Out-of-This-World Moon-Pie Adventure” (Simon & Schuster)
Jerry Pallotta, “The Icky Bug Alphabet Book” (Charlesbridge Publishing)
Jon Scieszka, “The Stinky Cheese Man” and “Science Verse” (Viking)
David Shannon, “No, David!” (Blue Sky Press)
Mo Willems, “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!” (Hyperion)

FOR OLDER BOYS

Eoin Colfer, “Artemis Fowl” series (Miramax)
Daniel Handler, (as Lemony Snicket) “A Series of Unfortunate Events” series (illustrator Brett Helquist is also a contributor) (HarperCollins)
Brian Jacques, “Redwall” series (Philomel)
David Lubar, “In the Land of the Lawn Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales” (Starscape)
Dav Pilkey, “Captain Underpants” series (Scholastic)
Peter Sis, “The Tree of Life: Charles Darwin” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Rick Spears (illustrator; by Kelly Milner Halls), “Dinosaur Mummies: Beyond Bare-Bone Fossils” (Darby Creek Publishing)
Ned Vizzini, “Be More Chill” (Miramax)