The other night a boy who looked about twelve or thirteen came up to the info desk looking for a book like the one he’d just read, Stetson by S.L. Rottman. I asked him what he liked about the book and he told me it has a boy narrator and features cars. He also said he likes books that are set in the real world, preferring them to fantasy or science fiction (which completely cuts out what little expertise in the J-Fic/YA areas I have).
So I went to one of our databases that gives book recommendations based on books you’ve already read and enjoyed. The first search produced mostly books by or about girls (maybe because Rottman is a woman) and the patron wasn’t interested in any of them. I couldn’t really blame him; none of them exactly matched his interests.
Of course databases aren’t perfect, so we tried another one. The only book this one found similar to Stetson was Stetson.
“I also like spy stories,” he said, sensing that he probably wasn’t going to find what he really wanted. We found a few spy books and he seemed content. But I wasn’t.
I was disappointed with the database experience, but mostly disappointed with my lack of knowledge in the area of boys’ books. The database searches I’ve used in the past are usually very good and quite accurate, so I wasn’t sure if this was a database glitch or what. (I also found two reference books on books for boys. For both, the latest editions were ten years old. There is a recently published book on good reads for boys, but it's $45.)
The next day I related this story to a librarian. She just nodded and said, “There just aren’t that many books written for boys that age.” This led to a discussion on why boys tend not to read as much as girls, how that drives the market, and lots of other things.
I recently listened to a Washington Post Book World podcast that cited a study done in Wisconsin on the reading habits of children. The study cited that on average, third-graders read about 40 books a year. By the time those kids reach high school, they’re only finishing four books a year. (Of course you have to consider that most books on a third-grade level are fairly thin.) What the study didn’t show was a breakdown by sex.
Okay, so I think we can assume that as boys get older, they read less. Is that due to sports, video games, attitudes that “Reading isn’t cool” or all of the above? Whatever the reasons, it’s frustrating.
I guess that’s one of the reasons I wrote a YA novel. (Yeah, I’m still revising….) Although it’s fantasy, it’s the type of story that I would have liked as a YA reader. Maybe someone else will like it. (Let’s first see if a publisher will like it.) I’d sure love to see more YA books with boy protagonists, but is there anybody out there to read them? The Harry Potter series is finished. The Series of Unfortunate Events is also finished. Are boys reading other books or simply moving on to sports and video games? And can you do anything about it?
Frustrating.
3 comments:
From what I've read girls outperform boys in reading significantly. There have been a lot of studies done on this.
I also just did a literature review of research done on gender stereotypes in children's literature. As far as more women characters than men in YA, according to most of the studies I read it is actually skewed towards men slightly or it's about equal representation depending on which study you read.
This may not reflect individual collections, however, and it doesn't change the fact that a good library should have titles of interest for both genders.
Maybe you should do more reading of YA literature. There are plenty of books to clue you in on the "hot"/quality titles, some resources are even free: ALA's Best Books for Young Adults. If your reading about a 100 titles per a year if you dedicated all your time to learning children's lit and young adult lit you should be able to pack 200 books easily in a single year (if you combine that with using resources/reference style books on the topic to supplement your knowledge with actual reading of titles) you should more than be able to bring yourself up to speed within a year. Or you could always just wade through all the books in your library's YA collection, so you know your own collection in and out.
I don't disagree with the findings of those studies, and I know you're far more familiar with them than I am, but from what I've seen there's a point of separation where boys' reading significantly drops off somewhere between the ages of 10-13. My observations (although we're only talking about a 6-month period) are also pretty much in line with this. Can you email or link me to some of the studies you've mentioned? I'd love to read them.
You're right - I do need to spend more time in the children's/YA literature. There are a couple of conferences/workshops geared to children's/YA, but I'll have to wait several months for one, a year for the other. In the meantime, I'm going to make it a priority to gain a better knowledge of the literature.
I posted my lit review on gender stereotypes in children's lit to my blog:
Gender Stereotypes in Children's Lit review
As for the are boys reading question. I know I've read articles and studies on it, but I'll need more time to find that.
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