Comments | enchantedinkpot: TOTW: "Boy Books"

leah_cypess in enchantedinkpot

TOTW: "Boy Books"

Jul 18, 2010 23:05

A few weeks ago I was in a Barnes & Nobles signing stock, and I passed by two sections shelved side by side. The first, the science-fiction & fantasy section, was populated by a group of guys sitting on the floor reading. In the second, the YA section, a couple of girls were discussing the books on display.

One anecdote does not a pattern make, but ( Read more... )

boy books, leah cypess

Comments 77

haremstress July 19 2010, 03:47:44 UTC

Ummm... why is the question about boys being left out of the YA "club," and not girls being left out of the sci-fi/fantasy "club"?

leah_cypess July 19 2010, 03:58:33 UTC

Ha - good question! The answer is because the anecdote is just an anecdote; I haven't heard any widespread observations about women feeling excluded from adult spec fic (doesn't necessarily mean they're not, though I've never personally felt that way; but as a community devoted to YA & MG fantasy, it's not the topic we've been hearing about.)

haremstress July 19 2010, 04:16:01 UTC

Women feeling excluded from spec fic is definitely a trend, from what I've seen. One of the reasons I got into YA, actually, is because I found it to be much more girl-friendly than adult spec fic. (It's also more multicultural and LGBT-inclusive -- adult spec fic is the land of the straight white male!)

I've seen this question come up before, about boys being excluded from YA. And this is always my reaction, since I feel like people don't ask nearly as often about women being excluded from spec fic, crime fiction, thrillers, and so forth. Male readers are privileged over females in most genres. As a general rule, men want to read about men, but women will read about either women or men. Apparently, this trend starts young.

If there is a problem here, I think it's that boys are unwilling to read about girls. That's the issue that needs to be tackled. Why aren't we teaching boys to value girls' voices and experiences as much as their own? Yes, boys certainly deserve some books targeted at their interests... but as you said, those ( ... )

leah_cypess July 19 2010, 04:27:29 UTC

I think the reason it's more of a concern is probably what Lia said - literacy during the teen years is a concern, whereas if adult don't want to read certain genres, that's their choice. I personally wouldn't care if a lot of teen boys were just skipping YA and reading adult books; but if they're not reading AT ALL, that's a problem.

But since I don't want to derail this topic (at least, not this early!), I'd like to discuss your point about whether the problem is that boys don't want to read about girls. Is that the problem (they do seem to be reading The Hunger Games, after all...), or is it something else?

I'll check in tomorrow morning to see what other opinions have been thrown in!

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lisagailgreen July 19 2010, 04:20:53 UTC

This sure seems to be a hot-button issue! I really tend to think it is an assumption on the part of many that boys aren't reading YA. I know many who've read Hunger Games and Crank and several other big name YA books. I've seen boys and girls in the YA dept. of Borders and Barnes and Noble. I'm not convinced (unless someone can show me a serious study) that there really is THAT huge of a divide. Maybe I'm just being too optimistic, I don't know.

leah_cypess July 19 2010, 11:43:02 UTC

Thanks for pointing this out, Lisa! That's one of the things I'm hoping to get information about in the comments... maybe librarians or booksellers will weigh in on whether this is merely a perception/assumption, or something they see happening out there in the trenches.

rosa_g July 19 2010, 05:22:25 UTC

I agree entirely with Cindy Pon's comment about the so-called "Twilight-effect". The popularity of this series, and other similar books, seems to have skewed the way many YA novels are presented and marketed. The covers depicting dark/edgy female heroines, or heroines pining after a supernatural boy, don't exactly tend to attract teenaged boys ( ... )

lunalila July 19 2010, 10:04:35 UTC

Been thinking about this for a while now. I'm working on a YA book co-stared by boy and girl, but romance isn't the main thread of the story, nor the secondary. It may bloom, but it's not the important part.
I agree though that it's not a problem boys don't read YA, the problem is if they read at all. But if we want YA to survive we'll have to broaden readership as much as possible, and boys are an important part.

Twilight clones anonymous July 19 2010, 11:48:33 UTC

Cindy said it. Boys don't want to read about a girl pining after dreamy supernatural creature X. Most YA books post-Twilight have become just like the adult female chicklit section, only substitute something paranormal in place of attractive, rich male love interest, and substitute high school in place of manhattan apartment and publishing job. Guys have no interest in that, and frankly, neither do I.

And to the poster above who said women are excluded from Sci-Fi and Fantasy-- just look at the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section. You'll see plenty of female skewed books there.

Re: Twilight clones dpeterfreund July 19 2010, 13:00:45 UTC

Anonymous, I'd LOVE for you to point out to me the "adult female chicklit" section of any bookstore, or ANY book published in the last 12 months that features the manhattan apartment and publishing job scenario. Heck, find one in the last 24 months!

I think you'll find about as many "female skewed" books in adult SFF as you'll find "male skewed" books in kidlit SFF. A few RECENT releases to get you started: Monstrumologist, The Maze Runner, Leviathan, ANYTHING by Rick Riordan... And then you've got the books that are very boy friendly even though they aren't written by boys and/or star boy MCs: like The Hunger Games, Uglies, White Cat, Going Bovine, etc.

And then you've got all the realism in YA that is boy friendly and boy written, books by Barry Lyga, Chris Crutcher, Jay Asher, John Green, David Levithan, etc.

Re: Twilight clones leah_cypess July 19 2010, 13:48:43 UTC

Diana, I actually compiled the list already (it will go up on Wednesday) and was surprised at how many boy-friendly YA fantasy books I found, given how certain everyone at the chat was about the problem. Yet at the same time... if you walk into the Borders YA section, it does seem to scream "paranormal romance." I wonder if the issue is not so much which books are published, as which books get the attention.

Sarah Rees Brennan is an interesting example - I can imagine her publishers going nuts trying to categorize it, what with the switching POVs. Interestingly, her re-jacket (to me) looks more like an adult fantasy cover than what you normally see in YA.

Re: Twilight clones dpeterfreund July 19 2010, 14:11:47 UTC

I think because Twilight was single-handedly floating its publishing house for a few years, a lot of other publishers got on the bandwagon and bought those kind of books, so yes, that is a lot of what you have been seeing on shelves in the past year or so. Additionally, much like what happened in the heyday of chick lit, many books that weren't chicklit were packaged to resemble it (I remember buying a bright pink book with a headless girl on the cover only to discover it was a serious novel about a young woman struggling with anorexia who went in and out of psychiatric institutes ( ... )

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