Hillary Tubin helps boys become readers, one parent at a time. She shares with you the secrets of initiating, transforming, and nurturing the daily reading habit with boys so they’ll want to read and thrive, not just survive, academically and in life.

Hillary has helped more than 350 pre- and early-adolescent boys become readers by showing parents the steps it takes to transform their sons’ reading habit at home, and it never gets old hearing what a difference it made in their lives.

Before starting her boy-responsive literacy consulting business and writing the Boys Will Read | Parent Series books, Hillary taught for over 20 years in suburban and urban districts both at the elementary and middle school levels from third to eighth grade. She discovered that neither her students' zip codes nor grade level mattered, most boys hated reading and consistently underperformed compared to girls.

Early in her career, Hillary tried everything she could think of to get boys to read, but nothing worked. Her pivotal aha moment came when she started attending boys’ sports games after school and over the weekends. There they came to life; boys were prepared, on point, and always ready to give their all.

However, it was how the boys responded to their coaches that made Hillary pay close attention. The same boys who whined to her about reading met their coaches’ instructions, demands, and feedback with rapt attention, respect, and responsiveness. They all had skin in the game, and Hillary wanted that for reading too.

​She talked to coaches to learn what made for a successful coach/player dynamic and to boys about what made them not want to read. To learn more, she also investigated a burning question: What are the parents of boys who read at home doing to make it happen, and most importantly, could it be taught?

With each conversation, Hillary discovered how to become the kind of reading habit coach boys needed so they’d have skin in their reading game, and she was able to teach it to others too.​​

In her first book, Amazon bestseller Boys and Books, Hillary breaks down what she calls the 10 Building Blocks and shows parents how to develop the boy-responsive reading mindset and environment so they, too, can become the reading habit coach their son needs to read.

For her next two books (pending publication), Hillary took her early conversations with coaches and went one-step further. She studied the best NFL and college football coaches (like Vince Lombardi, Don Shula, Bill Snyder and Tom Osborne), football playbooks, and coach/quarterback dynamics to create a gamified version of her transformational 90-day reading habit blueprint for boys and parents.

Hillary graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and received her M.S. in Reading/Writing Literacy. She is a National Board Certified Teacher in Early Adolescence/English Language Arts and a certified literacy facilitator, reading specialist, and K-12 principal. She has been honored with the Penn GSE Reading/Writing/Literacy Teacher Education Award and the United States Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Award to travel, research, and write literacy curriculum in China. Hillary trained teachers and other stakeholders on the Reading and Writing Common Core standards, and to develop her students’ literacy skills, Hillary partnered with community businesses like TE Connectivity, University City Hospitality Coalition, and the Philadelphia Zoo. Currently, she serves on the Norwalk Community Prevention Task Force and contributes a monthly blog article for the education site, Fractus Learning.

Click here for 10 Fun Facts about Hillary. 

Check out my blog articles here. 

Press Clips

Amazon Book Reviews for Boys and Books

Additional Information

4 Types of Reading

10 Reading-Habit Coach Tips 

2016 Gender Reading Gap, Fairfield County, CT (High-Performing School Districts)

2016 Gender Reading Gap, Fairfield County, CT (Alliance (low performing) Districts)

One School's Story: Middle School Boys' Reading Performance over Time