DISCUSSION: Boys and Reading

I know, I know. You're all probably wondering when I'm going to have another review up. I'm going to post one tomorrow, I think, for A Commonplace Killing. I look forward to talking about this book.

Anyway, let's get started. The idea with this post (I understand the title is a little vague) has stemmed from an eye-opening Twitter conversation with @Valeryinblack and @WeavingPages. They were talking about some pretty deep topics, and I decided to share my thoughts on this with you, as I think this topic can be difficult to talk about sometimes, and I'm prepared to talk about my opinion on this.

The first point I'm going to make is on gender distribution in YA. Later on I'm going to go into male readers.

This excellent article on gender distribution in novels found that "65% of the protagonists in YA novels were female, 22% were male, boys and girls shared main-character duties in 13%." When compared to numbers in books for younger readers (rough ages 9-12), there was a drastic change. The article stated that 48% of books for younger readers had male protagonists, 36% female, and 16% had both.

This data didn't surprise me too much. If I were to glance at the books on my shelves, I could be shamefully certain that only a handful would have male protagonists. I am, of course, in no way saying that it is wrong to have female protagonists- I'm simply arguing that the hard data shows that gender distribution is in no means equal in teenagers' novels.

Is marketing becoming more important in literature? After all, it is an accepted fact that boys of all ages tend to read less than girls of the same age. Are these figures catering for the reading preferences of girls rather than boys? Preteen girls tend to want to read more about boys (than boys would about girls), and teen girls want to read more about girls (in general, of course).

In my opinion, this could be taking the idea of target audiences a little too far.

So, let's have some more male protagonists! I think it's really important to speak out on this matter because it could make such a difference.

Finally, to officially round off the posts, let's talk a little about male readers.

Boys don't read as much as girls. It's a 'universally accepted truth' and it is seen all around the world. Teenage boys, especially. So, why?

They get bullied when they read. Or it could be so much more subtle than that. Rather than being actively discouraged from reading (generally from other children), some are simply victim to a lack of encouragement to read. It is generally perceived as 'wimpy', 'nerdy' or even 'girly' for a boy to read due to our society and its pesky gender-labelling and stereotyping.

Boys are mostly falling behind girls academically- and it's in correlation to their reading habits. So I think that it's time to make some changes.

It's my belief that we should include more male protagonists. Represent them as well and as strongly as our fantastic YA writers have been representing the women of the genre. I say, write for everyone. If we make subtle changes like this, and encouraged boys to read, it could make real changes to our societies.