Quick! Write that boy a book!

[spqrblues]

(A rant, not related to Rome at all. You can skip it.)

It's taken a long time, but I'm finally hearing, from more and more quarters, exasperation at the sheer bewildering wrongness of the near-constant insistence in the publishing industry that "we need more boy books"—a mantra I've been hearing since Day One of entering the publishing field. (Never mind for now what a "boy book" actually is—you can refer to the section in the Chicago Manual style guide on removing girl cooties.) A few days ago, YA author Tamora Pierce questioned this Truth in her journal, in which, along with much other spirited commentary on a variety of sub- and related topics, she states:

In the last couple of years, there has been a lot of stuff about how we don't have enough books out there for boys.

The last couple of years? Try the last couple of decades.

I have no idea when this idea originated—but I'm thinking it began whenever someone saw that there were a noticeable number of books that girls really like, with strong female heroines who are interested in something other than cute boys and taffeta (not that there's anything wrong with either, in moderate amounts). That you could look at a bookstore children's section and see more than Tom Swift, Boy Scout manuals, and the tamer novels of Robert Heinlein. Still it goes on, the pressure to make books "boy friendly," because (I am often told) we must give boys more, or they won't read at all. There just isn't enough reading material in the world directed at males. Keep this just between you and me, but I hear there are entire genres of novels written with the expectation that no men will read them at all (Romance genre, I'm looking at you).

In all seriousness, I've heard there's a phenomenon in which a man can be sitting in a lecture hall full of men, then if a handful of women enter and take seats, there's a perception that the room has been, well, taken over by women, a perception that there are many more women in the room, by percentage, than there actually are. I explain it poorly. But I did hear this, probably in lj or on DailyKos, so you know it's real.

I'm tired of being expected to make books I work on more "appealing to boys" (read: more violent! more muscle-y! more Xtreme! no kitties with pink bows! toss in a four-page fight scene!) because what's of prime importance is capturing the wild male reader, and girls, well, they'll accept anything you have on offer. One hears this at conferences (which I attended far too many of the past few weeks). One hears this at acquisitions meetings. I think the company I work for is bending away from this a little bit, but not in a way I would prefer. Can't have everything. Also, can't be more specific in a public forum. Alas.

I'd quote what YA editor Sharyn November has to say about the perpetual "we need more books for boys" wail, but this is a family journal. I only allow naked body parts, not cussing. Oh, wait, I allow cussing, too. Okay, never mind.

Comments

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Absolutely, yes. A little balance would be awfully nice.

You may want to reexamine the center of the discussion. The fact is that there are many books available for boys--including both prose and graphic novels, and magazines and all formats. But we'll focus on my own focus: prose and graphic novels. The selection has not dwindled, and there are books of all types and genres that should and do appeal across the board. The perception of available books has changed.

The "we need more boy books" contingent argues as if it is a zero-sum game:

If there exist "girl books" (in particular books with female protagonists), there must therefore be insufficient books for boys. This is the "women in the lecture hall" phenomenon noted above.
and
If boys truly are not reading as much as girls are, therefore it must be because there are not enough books of the right boyish stuff.

The perception of imbalance is merely that--and a fear that publishing must be doing something wrong if catalogues are not sufficiently tipped "toward boys" (what "toward boys" really means is up for debate--I merely present to you what some publishers look for in a "boy book"). There are more books in print than ever before--but the percentage of those that are "boy's own adventure" books is no longer as high as it once was, and the demarcation between "boy books" and "girly books" is no longer as clear. The lecture hall looks different, even though it has become a stadium.

The more complex discussion you can engage in is:

1) is it true boys aren't reading enough (in that their verbal skills are insufficient to prepare them to succeed in personal life and the international community)?

2) is it true boys won't read books with strong female characters or certain types of plots?

3) is it true boys will only read boks with a high violence content or what paddybrown categorises as "disparaged as meritless trash or borderline autism"?

4) Are male readers feeling a lack of books to read? (Or are they merely disgruntled at having to look through so many other books to find what they'd like, just like, say, a hard sf reader trying to find the Elizabeth Moon books buried in all the high fantasy novels down at the local chain bookstore?)

5) if even more "high boy appeal" material is provided than already widely and easily available, will young boys actually read it, instead of reading, say, Harry Potter and Scott Westerfeld, Catherine Fisher and Ysabeau Wilce, or other YA authors of thriller or adventure stories considered marginal or insufficiently boyish?

The company for which I work, by the way, is almost entirely a male-run business, with primarily males at the top and all but two or three women in strictly subordinate roles. You will find that the topmost echelon in publishing is still dominated by men, though there is, in fact, a strong female presence in the industry deciding the day-to-day shape of their lists. Clearly "female business" does not equate to "she-woman man-haters club, no boy stuff allowed." Because, if you examine your argument, children's publishing and primary education are almost entirely female businesses, but children's publishing and primary educators are the very people declaiming that "we need more books for boys."

Have a read through the comments to this entry for other male and female points of view, if gender of the writer is a useful way to weigh the arguments. Also some of the people I have been discussing this with in the industry are such manly men that they actually solely edit books about fast cars, vroom vroom.

I'm interested in hearing more of your perspective. It's very welcome here, but you'll likely get my usual longwinded reply.

[paddybrown.livejournal.com]

My perception is that in the pre-school picture book/storybook market, there's plenty for both genders, and plenty in the 12-and-up market, but there's a gap in the middle, the (my rough estimate) 7-11 range, and that's where we're losing boys. I blame the neutering of adventure. There's nothing much in between "everybody's friends and nobody means anybody any harm, but there may be misunderstandings" and "graphic violence with exit wounds".

As for comics, when I was seven or eight, there were dozens of comics available at my level and within my pocket money budget. Now virtually all comics are either TV tie-ins for toddlers, or for teens and up and expensively printed.

You make a good point about fiction allowing children "to explore fictional worlds, to gain experiences they may not have physical access to, to learn communication, empathy, and how people react and interact in a variety of situations". It strikes me that girls tend to enjoy exploring extreme emotional circumstances in fiction, while boys seem to prefer exploring physically dangerous circumstances (there's an overlap, as there always is, but I'm generalising). Both are things you want to have thought about and explored mentally before you have to face them in real life. But it seems to me that physical danger scenarios have been expunged from young kids' fiction. Probably more to do with parental discomfort with the idea of children in danger than any deliberate attempt to deny boys reading material they enjoy, but I think that's the outcome.

Your follow-up comment that girls, because they explore different imaginary circumstances than boys, do so at a "higher level", is an example of how boys' fictional interests are, consciously or unconsciously, considered inferior to girls'. Reading romantic novels has nothing like the social stigma of reading science fiction or military history - or comics.

[perilousknits.livejournal.com]

"but there's a gap in the middle, the (my rough estimate) 7-11 range, and that's where we're losing boys."

Well, right off the top of my head, I am remembering "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" and the rest of the Superfudge series. Also the Mouse on a Motorcycle series. Skinnybones. The Chocolate Touch. Maniac Magee. The Phantom Tollbooth. Encyclopedia Brown. Just about anything by Roald Dahl, especially (duh) his autobiographical novel, Boy.

Those were all books I read when I was 7-11 years old, and wondering where were the books with girl main characters?

Then, since then, I have added, to the list of books I would recommend to a 7-11 year old boy,

Bud, Not Buddy. The Well. Holes. The Mysterious Benedict Society. Hatchet (I'd give it to a 9 year old). Clockwork. The House with Clock in it's Walls. The Hobbit. The Spiderwick series. Guts. The White Fox Chronicles. The Westmark Trilogy, and other books by Lloyd Alexander.

Well, anyway, I haven't read all the books there are in the world. While I love children's literature, I now choose to focus on books with strong female protagonists, so I haven't read some of the more recent boy books, except if someone I know raves to me about how cool they are (Holes, Bud Not Buddy). But there seem to be a lot of boy books out there, in all age groups, so I don't see the problem. There ARE TOO enough books of in the 7-11 age range to keep a boy, who likes to read, occupied!

Now, if the problem is that there aren't enough books out there that tempt non-reading boys to want to read, then I can't help you. Although, supposedly there's some series about a boy who goes to a wizarding school . . . I hear even non-readers like to read that one, and it's supposed to be accessible to kids as young as 8. I know my nephews read it when they were 8 and 10. My next-to-youngest nephew was on book four before he himself turned 11. My youngest nephew is two, so I'll let you know what he thinks about it in six years.

[cyanocorax.livejournal.com]

Is the "His Dark Materials" series classified as girl or boy? Cuz it went over well in our Y-chromosome-heavy household despite the female protagonist. Though of course we're a reading house and will read the fine print on the soup can if we can't get anything else.

What we truly don't have enough of is biographies for middle schoolers.
It is like the publishers have decided that it is too hard to put together something meaty enough without requiring a college degree. Or, more likely, there just isn't a big enough market. I don't know why it would be any worse than the elementary school market, but there seems to be more big-print biographies around. Doubt there's anything any of you can do about it, unfortunately.

Can you tell we had trouble getting an acceptable book for the biography book report? Ended up with Geronimo.

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

There's an industry perception, with at least a couple of publishers that specifically target the school library market, that there are so many biographies already out there for middle schoolers that there's insufficient profit in creating more, especially on well-known figures. (Alexander the Great has been trendy lately for some reason, buttry to get Imhotep in there, and, pfft.) These particular publishers are more likely to do either very brief books on hugely popular contemporary people (J K Rowling, NASCAR guys, etc.), or look for obscure topics with some current tie-in (Victoria Woodhull and Belva Lockwood, first female candidates for U.S. president). Clarion Books used to be a good source for biographies in that age range. I'm not sure what they have cooking right now.

I remember when I was a very wee thing laughing at someone's joke that they were so starved for a book that they were reading the back of the toothpaste box. Years later, I literally found myself doing just that. It's insatiable, this need for words....

The glut of middle reader books... and dangerous predicaments

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Your follow-up comment that girls, because they explore different imaginary circumstances than boys, do so at a "higher level", is an example of how boys' fictional interests are, consciously or unconsciously, considered inferior to girls'.

Here you read "higher" as "superior." My conscious intention is for "higher" to mean "greater" as in "bigger," "larger," or "more intense." As in "this goes to eleven." I had no intention of assigning a worth value to one mode being "better" than the other. It was posed as a possibility, not a statement of truth. Fortunately, in a forum like this, one can clarify one's meaning.

Reading romantic novels has nothing like the social stigma of reading science fiction or military history - or comics.

It's my experience that reading romance novels is highly stigmatised in the media as a weepy, smarmy, silly, fluffy, waste of time for sexually naive or frustrated chicks who like those books with half-nekkid men and heaving bosoms on the cover. Science fiction is for nerds who wear Spock ears, and comics are for dateless guys who sit unwashed in dark comic shops. But reading military history, that is for intellectual manly men with a firm grasp on the historical and contemporary global situation and a deep appreciation of the Greatest Generation and the Things that really Matter in the World. Unless you read it while dressed in khaki in your survival shelter, in which case no one will insult you, because you might blow them up.

perilousknits began a list of books for middle readers in her reply. I won't expand on it because the list would go on for a very long time. The "middle reader" or "middle grade" market (ages 7-10 and 9-12) is the PRIME market for "boy books," the ones she listed along with Captain Underpants, the Riot Brothers, Lemony Snicket, all manner of books serious and humourous about pirates, rogues, highwaymen, lads with dogs, lads who lose their dogs, lads who meet the tomboy girl next door, lads who learn to hunt, lads who get goosebumps, lads who save the world. Girls are often short-shrifted in the middle reader market, except for a few explosive series such as Mallory and the Babysitters Club

I'm not sure whether you live in a region where book selection is skewed because of community pressures, because physical danger scenarios remain prime plot points in books, the extent of the danger depending on the age of the reader and the seriousness of the book. It's too predictable that, about 2/3 through a book, the hero--or heroine--will be in horrible predicaments and have to find a way to safety by the ending. When I mentioned Westerfeld, Fisher, and Wilce (because I happened to have those books on the table nearby), I cited three authors whose heroines and heroes spend almost the entirety of multiple novels in myriad life-threatening situations of high action, fast pacing, and, yes, emotional development as well. Of course it's possible to find happy books as well--and sometimes one wants to read books that are all fun and humour, maybe about some kids solving a non-life-threatening mystery down on the cul-de-sac with their cocker spaniel. Every book needn't be printed in blood.

In all seriousness, I ask: How do you survey books available for kids? What is your reference for your sense of the market? Depending on where you live, there are resources where you can see every book published each season by a majority of children's publishers in the United States and some from Canada. If you are in the NYC area, the Children's Book Council (http://www.cbcbooks.org) library is open during business hours.

The selection of graphic novels is scanty for under-12s, I agree with you. I would like to see much more, of all types of plots and styles of art. There's this awesome series of graphic/prose hybrid books where you choose your own path through the story, in which in the first book, Captured by Pirates, you might get eaten by sharks, killed by islanders, shot by rival pirates, used as bait, or nibbled by maggots... which I think ought to qualify as scenarios of physical danger. Darned good book. Just happened to hear about it somewhere.

edited for clarity about the CBC

Re: The glut of middle reader books... and dangerous predicaments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm in Belfast, Northern Ireland, so I don't think I'll be getting to the CBC library any time soon. My fairly uninformed opinion is based on looking around and seeing very little of what I would have enjoyed at seven or eight, with most of it seeming either too young, too old, or too suitable for parents (there's nothing like feeling you're getting away with something).

It occurs to me that the big problem with this argument is that we were probably both nerdy kids (I know I was), who'd have dug up or made something to read if there wasn't anything better immediately available, and we're worrying about what non-nerdy kids have to read. But somehow, a lot of non-nerdy people seem to get through life quite happily and successfully without discovering the joy of reading. It's easy to forget that literacy isn't natural, it doesn't come as naturally to everybody, and not everybody gets the same fun out of it.

Maybe it's not the available reading material - maybe it's just the prevailing atmosphere. My perception is that boys are largely left to their own devices, given plenty of negative attention when they misbehave, but not given much validation or encouragement for their good qualities, and girls are given plenty of validation and encouragement for the good stuff, get away with more bad stuff, and their activities are micro-managed to within an inch of their lives. I don't think I'd like to be either in the current climate.

Re: The glut of middle reader books... and dangerous predicaments

[paddybrown.livejournal.com]

That was me, by the way. Livejournal seems to have logged me out without me noticing.

Re: The glut of middle reader books... and dangerous predicaments

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

we're worrying about what non-nerdy kids have to read.
My concern is with the pressure the publishing industry, along with some educators, librarians, pundits, and politicans, has put on itself to produce material to fill a possibly mythical need for "books boys will read." It saddens me to have to expend energy not on creating the best possible books at every reading level, but trying to create what it is imagined would be necessary for this Boy Reader to become a voracious bibliophile. As you state, it is very likely that the imagined Boy Reader [note that I mean the creature from the "boy reader" argument, not "all boys in general"] is quite happy not curled up with a book. I do want the various educational systems of the world to educate children to a reasonable standard of literacy and critical thinking, and I believe material is already available for that purpose and continues to be produced each year.

While we're at it, I'm getting a little tired of comics intended for anyone under 18 being categorised as "material for reluctant readers." Just so as you know.

girls are given plenty of validation and encouragement for the good stuff
I'll let someone else handle the discussion on how girls' behaviour is restricted in every moment of their lives. Beyond the scope of this journal entry.

Re: The glut of middle reader books... and dangerous predicaments

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

I wanted to add, your remarks may be quite valid for Belfast or all of Northern Ireland and therefore welcome as a glimpse into the state of kid lit there. Although I've lived outside the U.S., and although children's publishing in the U.S. frequently imports and exports books from all around the world and the cross-pollination is quite high, particularly for books originally written in English, I don't have enough knowledge of the overall state of children's publishing outside the U.S. and Canada to assess the "boy book" situation elsewhere, nor do I know how great an issue the publishing industry or educators have made it. So I can't offer even an uniformed opinion on the current state of the bookshelves even where I used to live. I can only assess a handful of UK publishers—and I'd have to include them in the assessment of US/Canadian publishers I know about, as having the same general spectrum of books for younger and older kids originating from local and international authors.