Books for boys?
Clocked out at the office and headed to my local suburban chain bookstore. Based on what I saw prominently displayed on the shelves, there's only one conclusion to be drawn: the next generation of literary consumers will be almost exclusively female.
It's more than the wall-to-wall Twilight. The shelves are packed with "Young Adult" fiction--and most of it is aimed right at tweenage girls.
I suppose we, as a society, should feel good about this. After all, we're only a few generations removed from the notion that educating girls at all was a total waste of time. And I can't be discouraged at the sight of young people in bookstores wanting to buy books--any books at all.
But I keep thinking to myself--where are all the boys? I didn't see any tweenage boys running about in the bookstore with anything near the same enthusiasm.
What, if anything, do boys read anymore? Do they read Sci-Fi or Fantasy? Do they devour, like I did, Sherlock Holmes or Edgar Allan Poe?
Can it be that we've slowly been constructing boyhood--and now manhood-- in a way that excludes books, or reading, or any intellectual pursuit at all? And, if we've managed this, where are we going to put all those boys in a world that so desperately needs them to be intellectually curious and culturally literate?
It's more than the wall-to-wall Twilight. The shelves are packed with "Young Adult" fiction--and most of it is aimed right at tweenage girls.
I suppose we, as a society, should feel good about this. After all, we're only a few generations removed from the notion that educating girls at all was a total waste of time. And I can't be discouraged at the sight of young people in bookstores wanting to buy books--any books at all.
But I keep thinking to myself--where are all the boys? I didn't see any tweenage boys running about in the bookstore with anything near the same enthusiasm.
What, if anything, do boys read anymore? Do they read Sci-Fi or Fantasy? Do they devour, like I did, Sherlock Holmes or Edgar Allan Poe?
Can it be that we've slowly been constructing boyhood--and now manhood-- in a way that excludes books, or reading, or any intellectual pursuit at all? And, if we've managed this, where are we going to put all those boys in a world that so desperately needs them to be intellectually curious and culturally literate?