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

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.