TOTW: "Boy Books"

[leah_cypess]

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

Comments

[haremstress]

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]

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]

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]

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!

[chocolatepot]

I agree. We need more Diana Wynne Jones-type fiction, where the girl-protagonist books are not strikingly different from the boy-protagonist ones.

[lalaith7]

Late to the party, but I agree here, I love how in Diana Wynne Jones' work there may or may not be romance and the MC may be male or female, but I pretty much love everything equally.

[leah_cypess]

I'm really not sure why it matters, in the context of this discussion, whether women are sidelined in adult sf/fantasy or the film industry. Not that thes things shouldn't be discussed if they are indeed problems, but how does it affect the question of whether there are enough boy-friendly books in YA?

[leah_cypess]

The question of whether we are misperceiving the imbalance in YA is certainly open to question, regardless of our underlying biases. It’s discussed more extensively in a lot of the comments below, and I’m not sure there’s any consensus; but of interest is this post natalieag pointed me to, where an agent says that most of the publishers she submits to have one “boy book” slot per list: http://kidlit.com/2010/07/16/boy-protagonists-in-ya/... )

[leah_cypess]

(Also - I realize the problem of insufficient representation is not just a question of whether there are enough movies to watch; it's a question of how they're affected by the movies they do watch. But I don't think that's a parallel issue to the one under discussion here.)

[leah_cypess]

I agree 100% that if boys are simply reading other genres, that’s not a problem. But a lot of people seem to feel that when they hit the teen years, many boys stop reading entirely. Like you said, though, there’s no data beyond the anecdotal (and if anyone ever manages to put together good data on this, I kind of suspect it won’t be the publishing industry...)