I’m the dad of a 14 year old boy. Specifically, a reader who happens to be a 14 year old boy.
Why mention this? Because we love to find books to fill his summer list, especially when he heads off to camp with a stack that he often rips through within a couple of weeks. So when the Globe published a list of books aimed at “14 and up” we read it with great attention. Until our heart sank.
Every book is aimed at girls. All have a female main character and a romantic plot. Reads one description: “The year is 1918. The Spanish flu and World War I are testing everyone’s strength, but when Mary Shelley Black, 16, discovers she can see the spirit of her dead true love…”
Seriously?
So, what’s he carrying to camp this summer?
World War Z by Matt Brooks, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. He seems to have a focus on guys named Philip. That and science fiction. Last summer he went through a bit from guys named Ray, Isaac and Arthur.
It’s not that he objects to female protagonists. Also on his list is Outcasts Unlimited, since it’s the Newton North book for this coming year, but he also isn’t about to read a “gothic romance,” as one book Globe’s list is described.
Yes, there are other lists, but seriously Boston Globe? You don’t think boys read?
I can’t speak to the Globe list, but this is an interesting reversal, since the great majority of protagonists in books for children (I don’t know about YA lit) are male. Here’s an article about one much-publicized study: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/06/gender-imbalance-children-s-literature
Publishers have found that, in general, girls will read books with male protagonists but boys avoid books with female protagonists. Of course, there are exceptions. But I’d say the reading choices of my 15- and 11-year-old daughter and son bear out the rule.
I don’t think the main problem is as much the gender of the protagonists (though it would be good to see more parity) as the genre. Do they really all have to be romances? There must be good books for teens that don’t have romance as the main plot points.
I can say that back in grade school I enjoyed Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys equally. In junior high, coming off the 1967 Red Sox season, I had a baseball novel phase, reading among others, all the Kid from Tomkinsville books I could find in the school library, and then got into Agatha Christie mysteries, whose protagonists seemed to be fairly gender-balanced. If there was a romance genre for teens a la “Twilight” I seem to have missed it. I also remember loving a series of books by Willard Price (Amazon Adventure, African Adventure) where two brothers went on great trips with their animal-collector father if I remember correctly, that were clearly aimed at boys. Now I just wish I had time to read books.
@chuck: try also the series that starts with Swallows and Amazons. Great but real adventures with a mixed group of kids between the wars (not that the era matters at all)
As far as gender balance, it’s less about the protagonist and more about the themes. Harry Potter does very well with girls and the Hunger Games does very well with boys. Both my sons loved the Hunger Games series because it dealt with so many different broad themes.
Yes, it had some romance and love triangles, but really it was about the human condition and the human spirit. And @andreae, I’ll check out the series!
Chuck – toss in The Stories of Ray Bradbury, available at New England Mobile Book Fair. Bradbury was an incredibly gifted writer who never quite lost touch with his inner youth and his work is gender non-specific.
My son graduated from Newton North last year and has a learning disability that was an obstacle when he was learning to read. We learned pretty quickly that engaging him was the best way to encourage him to keep plugging away at it. Although some teachers frowned on it, he learned to read by devouring comic books, from Captain Underpants to Anime. He has read and reread the The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as the Harry Potter books, from which he seems to get something new with each visit. Today, he is an avid reader who loves science fiction and fantasy, but has also rediscovered some of the literature that he was required to read in high school.
Although the overwhelming majority of heroic figures in these books are male, I would note that one of the heroes of Return of the King is a woman, Eowyn, who was disguised as a man in armor when she confronted the Witch-king of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgûl. After mortally wounding her father, King Theoden in battle, he taunts her that “no living man” can defeat him. She removes her helmet, revealing that she is a woman, and says: “But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.” True to her word, when he attacks, she slays him.
Ted – it always saddens me when teachers (or anyone else) discourage reading that doesn’t meet their ideas of what kids “should” read. My son was similar to yours, finally getting started by reading Garfield comics, progressing to Calvin & Hobbes and Foxtrot before he was ready for “real” books. He and his cousin also both got pulled into reading more by Road & Track magazine – again, something his cousin’s teachers didn’t want to count as reading. My view is you use anything that pulls kids into reading – you want them to learn it’s fun.
I found with my son that he didn’t care about the gender of the protagonist as long as it’s a good story and not “girly”. So while he would never have enjoyed Anne of Green Gables, he enjoyed books like Caddy Woodlawn, Robin McKinley’s Hero and the Crown/Blue Sword books, as well as his now-standard diet of SF/F. But shame on the Globe if all their books were female protagonists with romantic plots.
Thanks, mgwa. My wife is a teacher, as were both of my parents, so we never hesitated to adapt to each of our kids’ learning styles so that they could be the best they could be at everything they do.
And I’m just cantankerous and ornery, so ditto 😉
If he likes World War Z, try seeking out “Hard Times” by Studs Terkel. As I read “Z” I couldn’t help but think he ripped off the premise, and low and behold Studs was acknowledged by the author. May seem like an out-there choice but your son will recognize the style, and learn a bit about the Depression (in, I hope he’ll find, an entertaining way).
I have some strong feelings about this, both as a parent of two boys and as a writer. Part of the problem that ends up with a shelf full of YA romantic triangles with etherized girls in prom dresses on their covers is the contraction of the publishing industry. We are down to a handful of major publishing houses that consist of a number of small imprints. With less diversity in publishers comes less diversity in books on the shelves.
And publishing is a business. What sells seems to be YA romance-heavy novels. It drives teen boys away from YA titles and to thrillers and SF. Which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but it leaves the YA shelves a monoculture of reading.
I’ve written YA books that have gotten high praise in their rejection letters from the major publishers, partly because I am still an ‘unknown,’ but also because they don’t want to take a chance on a book that isn’t a YA romance-centric title even when they love the story.
Chuck, I have always found the reading lists and resources that the Fessenden School has on their website very helpful – http://www.fessenden.org/podium/default.aspx?t=127825&rc=0 Also the website guysread.com – the brainchild of author John Scieszka
And my 15-year-old son who is a great reader also turned up his nose at the Globe list.