'Boys aren't reading' because the children's book market is run by women??

I'm with Chris. One reason boys (and some girls) don't read more is they can enter and interact with any number of fantasy worlds through video games. Give boys a choice between a new video game and a new book series, or between an X-Box and a Kindle, and stand back or be trampled by a near unified mass. Most video games seem to me to be geared toward males, so that competition, with its immediate gratification and involvement, is likely impacting reading involvement of young males.

So, do we need more female game designers and developers, so we could have a greater involvement of young females as video game players/consumers?

NeuroFizz said:

So, do we need more female game designers and developers, so we could have a greater involvement of young females as video game players/consumers?

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My tuppence worth is:

1. Some adventure stories have characters of both genders - Swallows and Amazons. (Thinking back, I remember there being a range of characters, from a bossy boy, and a bossy girl, two girls less inclined to take orders (the Amazons) and then the two younger Swallows.)

2. Going round a cat rescue centre, heard a small boy indignantly rejecting the cute cat his mother suggested "I want a BOY cat".

3. I don't like video games - far too loud. I like books - pictures in my head. It may be that there are different brain patterns that favour one or the other and that could be age or gender related to some extent.

4. Maybe boys stop reading when they reach the age when they are old enough that their parents allow them out to roam the neighbourhood and start doing all the tree house and whatever things that they've read about.

Question - well out of touch with kids books these days. How many are Swallows and Amazon like - as in healthy outdoor adventure, and how many are about dating?

Bolero said:

Question - well out of touch with kids books these days. How many are Swallows and Amazon like - as in healthy outdoor adventure, and how many are about dating?

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So these are the only options for children's writers? Wow.

I know you didn't mean to come off as insulting, but this really REALLY is insulting to people who write for kids. Maybe, rather than asking what's out there, you could go to your local bookshop and visit the children's section. Where you will discover a huge range of books of virtually all types (with obvious exceptions, such as erotica).

The whole bit of there being books meant for girls is how I wound up with three copies of Heidi.

It's not that boys aren't reading books, it's that people say things like 'boys aren't reading books.' When supposedly knowledgeable people keep saying things like that, then eventually it stands to reason that boys are going to listen.

It's social conditioning.

It happens in areas of life. There are 'boys' books/toys/colours/jobs and 'girls' books/toys/colours/jobs. We are mentally trained from a young age that there are very set differences between the sexes, and we hear things so often that they become ingrained.

I read and article recently about a study that was done into test scores between boys and girls where the main variable was telling them that girls performed better on that type of test. There were some interesting results, with wide variations which showed that when told girls did better both genders scores went down, boys moreso than girls. But when told nothing test scores were on average the same between genders.

Terie said:

So these are the only options for children's writers? Wow.

I know you didn't mean to come off as insulting, but this really REALLY is insulting to people who write for kids. Maybe, rather than asking what's out there, you could go to your local bookshop and visit the children's section. Where you will discover a huge range of books of virtually all types (with obvious exceptions, such as erotica).

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I have to agree with this wholeheartedly.

My daughter is 7 and a prolific reader who is reading far above her age group. We are into the MG section now and I'm finding a whole wonderful array of books for her by many amazng writers with some wonderful stories. She's particularly taken with the Horrid Henry series at the moment.

Earlier this year I myself published a kids book where the main character dies on the first page. The novel deals with death, love, religion and friendship and loss and all from the POV of a young boy. It's not heavy, well, maybe in some parts, but for the most part it's funny and light and I've had really good feedback on it.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00II99KN8/?tag=absowrit-20

I'm certainly not the only person out there writing stories that don't fit into either of the categories listed, and my daughter is certainly not the only child to read across many genres.

NeuroFizz said:

I'm with Chris. One reason boys (and some girls) don't read more is they can enter and interact with any number of fantasy worlds through video games. Give boys a choice between a new video game and a new book series, or between an X-Box and a Kindle, and stand back or be trampled by a near unified mass. Most video games seem to me to be geared toward males, so that competition, with its immediate gratification and involvement, is likely impacting reading involvement of young males.

So, do we need more female game designers and developers, so we could have a greater involvement of young females as video game players/consumers?

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It's interesting to me the way these conversations are gender-swapped mirror images of each other - I saw a woman working at a UK children's imprint the other day say "I never get resumes from men, so that's why they're under-represented." Which coming from a male games industry rep would strike me as an evasion.

But what I would point out as a difference is this: the female-dominated children's book industry has never made me, a man, feel unwelcome, threatened, or excluded. I have never had to deal with sexism, whereas all of the women I know working in games have alluded to coming up against it at least once.

I would also say that there are plenty of books being published for boys and always have been. Boys are well-represented in terms of protagonists in children's books, in terms of the kinds of books that are published (there's plenty of non-fiction if that's what male kids want), etc. I don't see the same kinds of deficiencies and problematic attitudes that I see in games.

NeuroFizz said:

So, do we need more female game designers and developers, so we could have a greater involvement of young females as video game players/consumers?

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This reminds of that quote 'there are no girl gamers, we're all just gamers.'

As a gamer I feel very frustrated that game companies see me as either needing something pink and fuzzy, or needed a very highly sexualized character with impractical weapons and no bra.

For a long time, especially in RPG's where you had a choice between hard or easy options, the female was always the 'easy' option - stating the game with a full clip, higher health etc. Where was my flamethrower, or was that too heavy for poor Jill to hold?

And in multi-character games, and Final Fantasy, much as I love that series, is ridiculously guilty of this, the physically weak 'healer' and support roles were always reserved for the women. Admittedly they did have some pretty bad ass female characters too, but the main characters were always male until FFX-2 when it was an all female cast and was basically about dressing up.

Hapax Legomenon said:

I mean yeah there's issues of sexism of what books boys are "supposed" to like but I think the problem is a lot simpler than that. This is a huge generalization here and I don't know how much of it is created by society or whatever but little boys tend to be, well, "antsier" than little girls. They tend to be less able/willing to sit still and be quiet for long periods of time than young girls, which is exactly what a reading habit requires.

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I think the idea that boys are supposed to be active and girls are supposed to sit still is part of cultural conditioning. While some boys are certainly more active than some girls, some girls are more active than some boys.

KarmaPolice said:

1) Boys can't hack moralising, and unfortunately women authors tend to do that more often than males. Yes, have a 'message' by all means, but don't bloody do it where you have the 14 year-old MC hectoring the reader like your mother.

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Stats to show female authors moralize more than male authors in the same genres?

KarmaPolice said:

2) Boys have a much stricter padding threshold - they need to get into the action within 200-300 words. The book also needs to be less than an inch; only ones with a proven 'track record' can get away with more. This means the padding control needs to be tight as hell, an idea which many YA/MC writers seem to miss. The best feedback I got for my beta YA was from a 15 year-old boy who said they 'wanted more details about the MC'.

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Well, most readers don't want to be bored. I don't think that has to do with gender.

AHunter3 said:

I don't see anything good coming out of any analysis that assumes that young boy-people are inherently different than young girl-people. (And that we know what those differences are, and boys need fire trucks and doggies instead of tea parties and kitty cats or whatever)

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I don't think there's any rule about gendered thought and feelings, but I think there *is* a certain tendency when the populations of each are looked at as a whole.

I haven't nearly the information to discuss that as a "nature vs nurture" debate, but whatever the cause, the trend does seem to exist.

But even if that's so, that should have nothing to do with the editors, publishers, reviewers, etc. A good book is still a good book.

Torgo said:

It's interesting to me the way these conversations are gender-swapped mirror images of each other - I saw a woman working at a UK children's imprint the other day say "I never get resumes from men, so that's why they're under-represented." Which coming from a male games industry rep would strike me as an evasion.

But what I would point out as a difference is this: the female-dominated children's book industry has never made me, a man, feel unwelcome, threatened, or excluded. I have never had to deal with sexism, whereas all of the women I know working in games have alluded to coming up against it at least once.

I would also say that there are plenty of books being published for boys and always have been. Boys are well-represented in terms of protagonists in children's books, in terms of the kinds of books that are published (there's plenty of non-fiction if that's what male kids want), etc. I don't see the same kinds of deficiencies and problematic attitudes that I see in games.

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Thanks for this post, because I was wondering the same thing, and I think you nailed a lot of key differences. I think it's also true that while the publishing industry itself does have a larger percentage of women than men, the same is not true for writers, the content creators, as a whole, where I think gender tends to be more balanced. Gaming is actually an inverse of that; the business side, especially publishing and marketing, has much more gender balance, but the creative side, design and dev, is overwhelmingly male. I think that's why you see a broader range of representation in fiction protagonists, while videogames tend to be much more limited and problematic.

Terie said:

So these are the only options for children's writers? Wow.

I know you didn't mean to come off as insulting, but this really REALLY is insulting to people who write for kids. Maybe, rather than asking what's out there, you could go to your local bookshop and visit the children's section. Where you will discover a huge range of books of virtually all types (with obvious exceptions, such as erotica).

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I apologize. I should have phrased that better, as more of a question without the assumptions, that was my experience of what was available when I was a kid reading kids books and I just assumed - oops. Outdoor adventure (including pony stories) or relationships. Maybe there was more available and that was all the library stocked and my parents approved (though dating ones would not have been approved..... )
Though I do realise I've forgotten Rosemary Sutcliff and other historical writers - though quite a lot of that was semi-outdoor adventure - Eagle of the Ninth....

Other than Rosemary Sutcliff I recall no-one dying in any kids book I read as a kid.

Children's books have been trying to appeal to boys for so long, even JKR had to keep her gender a secret because they thought it would hurt her sales with boys. People have believed that writing a girl protagonist is an automatic turn-off for boys... Books have been trying to cater to boys for the longest time and it hasn't been working. A different approach is required.

Books have been trying to cater to boys for the longest time and it hasn't been working. A different approach is required.

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Yeah. Like not worrying about it.

Why aren't we celebrating the fact that so many girls read? The gaming industry doesn't seem to worry too much about girls not playing games.

Hapax Legomenon said:

Children's books have been trying to appeal to boys for so long, even JKR had to keep her gender a secret because they thought it would hurt her sales with boys. People have believed that writing a girl protagonist is an automatic turn-off for boys... Books have been trying to cater to boys for the longest time and it hasn't been working. A different approach is required.

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I'm not sure it's been proven that children's books have been failing to appeal to boys, you know?

I take your point about JKR's name, but we can't tell what would have happened if she'd called herself Joanne instead. And I don't believe that boys were ever turned off stuff like His Dark Materials because of the female protagonist in Northern Lights.

What different approach would you suggest, though? I mean, just anecdotally, at the top of businesses, I've worked with David Lloyd (head of Walker Books at the time), David Fickling (head of David Fickling Books), Klaus Flugge (head of Andersen Press), and many others.

mirandashell said:

Yeah. Like not worrying about it.

Why aren't we celebrating the fact that so many girls read? The gaming industry doesn't seem to worry too much about girls not playing games.

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Good point.

Thinking about it, the same kind of discussion happens about sf and fantasy, regarding gender of readership and authors hiding their gender and the like.

I have a suggestion for getting more boys to read: encourage more of their male role models to read. Encourage them to bond with little boys over books the same way they might over sports or cars. How many of the boys who aren't reading are also boys who never see their fathers, uncles, or other men in their lives picking up a book?

Torgo said:

It's interesting to me the way these conversations are gender-swapped mirror images of each other - I saw a woman working at a UK children's imprint the other day say "I never get resumes from men, so that's why they're under-represented." Which coming from a male games industry rep would strike me as an evasion.

But what I would point out as a difference is this: the female-dominated children's book industry has never made me, a man, feel unwelcome, threatened, or excluded. I have never had to deal with sexism, whereas all of the women I know working in games have alluded to coming up against it at least once.

I would also say that there are plenty of books being published for boys and always have been. Boys are well-represented in terms of protagonists in children's books, in terms of the kinds of books that are published (there's plenty of non-fiction if that's what male kids want), etc. I don't see the same kinds of deficiencies and problematic attitudes that I see in games.

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I think this is an important point - the kind of unspoken inclusion/exclusion thing.

There are plenty of 'boy books,' from Ender and The Great Brain and LoTR to Ian Fleming's, that girls of all ages read with no issue. There are fewer things seen as 'girl books,' that boys read with the same ease, for a variety of reasons.

I heard a writer on a tv show once asked why there were no women among the dozen or so in that show's room. He said they didn't get applications from women, and to tell women to send them in! Sometime later, one of the people working on that show casually explained, in an interview, that women just aren't as funny as men. Yeah, it's just that women don't want to work there. Sure.

Women, the long-time recipients of that behaviour, tend not to be casually or unthinkingly exclusive like that, as you point out. Obviously, there's an exception to every rule, but in general. Women wear pants and literal men's suits. Men who put on a skirt are 'weird,' at least. Dressing 'up' is understandable to those on top, dressing 'down' is not.

Are boys, or girls, even aware of the genders that work inside publishing? Or care? Aside from the author, I doubt any children know much about what goes on behind the scenes.

Neither of my boys read recreationally, and not for my lack of trying. They just aren't interested. They'd rather play video games or sports.

At their age I was a voracious reader. But I'll admit, I pretty much only read male authors. I don't know why. It wasn't until after reading a dozen or so books by Andre Norton that I found out he was a she and that changed that.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Are boys, or girls, even aware of the genders that work inside publishing? Or care? Aside from the author, I doubt any children know much about what goes on behind the scenes.

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The idea is more that the unequal representation among 'gatekeepers' - editors, book buyers, reviewers, prize committees - skews the kinds of books that are published, which are not (under this theory) appealing to boys.

Isn't one of the reasons boys read less is because they spend more time playing video games and watching TV? When I was a kid in the 70s, my brother certainly did (well, we didn't have video games yet, but he spent hours each week watching television). I spent more time reading and playing with toys.

Many of the books I read, however, were "boy books," in that they focused on exploration and adventures (even then, I liked SF and F), and the male characters were often cast in the more important/interesting roles in the stories. When I played with toys, I had them acting out adventurous stories and fighting epic battles.

There were some stories with girls who did interesting things when I was a kid, and they were rare treasures. My brother read a lot less than I did, but he liked those books too. A Wrinkle in Time, The Little House Books, Pippii Longstocking, The Narnia Books and so one. He didn't sneer at them because they had girls in them.

I suspect that boys and girls both would like books where girls and boys both do cool things. But boys in general seem to be less inclined to sit still and lose themselves in a page of text. It may not be that they don't read at all, just that they read less. I know that I read a lot less when I was hooked on World of Warcraft for a few years.

I suppose if a preponderance of female children's book editors means a preponderance of books about boyfriends and babysitting and first kisses and so on, then boys (and quite a few girls) will be less interested in reading those books.

mirandashell said:

Yeah. Like not worrying about it.

Why aren't we celebrating the fact that so many girls read? The gaming industry doesn't seem to worry too much about girls not playing games.

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I'm sure you mean well, but this is actually a kind of offensive statement because it marginalizes all the work being done to reform gaming and make it a more positive space. There are many, many people in the game industry who do worry a lot about this, myself included, and who are working very hard to try to make it a more inclusive, non-sexist, and accommodating medium, both for people who want to work in it and for fans who want to enjoy it. There was an entire summit track at this year's Game Developer's Conference on the subject, and if you follow games journalism the issue is increasingly on the forefront of many major publications. It is absolutely an industry-wide problem that girls don't play more games, and it is a problem that stems from deep, ingrained sexism and a boy's club mentality. It's also something many of us are working to try to change.

I don't think celebrating the fact that girls read is somehow mutually exclusive with encouraging more boys to read, and I think the attitude of "well boys like video games and girls like books, so let's leave it at that" is more than a little problematic.

Roxxsmom said:

Isn't one of the reasons boys read less is because they spend more time playing video games and watching TV?

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I dunno. My brother is a games programmer and he reads two to three books a week -- in addition to apparently not sleeping because he games so much.

Maybe he would read more if he was an accountant who played golf, but he's pretty voracious about books already.

Torgo said:

I'm not sure it's been proven that children's books have been failing to appeal to boys, you know?

I take your point about JKR's name, but we can't tell what would have happened if she'd called herself Joanne instead. And I don't believe that boys were ever turned off stuff like His Dark Materials because of the female protagonist in Northern Lights.

What different approach would you suggest, though? I mean, just anecdotally, at the top of businesses, I've worked with David Lloyd (head of Walker Books at the time), David Fickling (head of David Fickling Books), Klaus Flugge (head of Andersen Press), and many others.

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I think probably a big thing would be to stop gendering books so much. Lyra or Coraline being girls did not stop them from being awesome or having adventures. Kids don't care that the main character of The Legend of Korra is a girl, they just think she's cool and the large number of well-developed female main characters in Avatar: The Last Airbender did not stop any boys from watching it.

By handing out the advice that boys can't know a woman wrote a book or that to appeal to both genders you have to write boys you're creating gendered fiction that tells boys that if they want to read a good book a boy has to be the main character. That eliminates a huge amount of reading material for them. I mean it's not just romance novels that are written by women, mostly for women, with female main characters. Lots of historical fiction is written this way, literary fiction, mysteries, certain fantasy genres, etc. By doing this you're teaching boys early on that many books are off-limits and of course they're going to read less because of that.

Hapax Legomenon said:

I think probably a big thing would be to stop gendering books so much. Lyra or Coraline being girls did not stop them from being awesome or having adventures. Kids don't care that the main character of The Legend of Korra is a girl, they just think she's cool and the large number of well-developed female main characters in Avatar: The Last Airbender did not stop any boys from watching it.

By handing out the advice that boys can't know a woman wrote a book or that to appeal to both genders you have to write boys you're creating gendered fiction that tells boys that if they want to read a good book a boy has to be the main character. That eliminates a huge amount of reading material for them. I mean it's not just romance novels that are written by women, mostly for women, with female main characters. Lots of historical fiction is written this way, literary fiction, mysteries, certain fantasy genres, etc. By doing this you're teaching boys early on that many books are off-limits and of course they're going to read less because of that.

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Yeah, because absolutely no one whatsoever in any part of children's publishing has ever in the entire history of children's publishing said anything like this ever before.

/sarcasm

Maybe people who want to dish out advice to children's writers and industry professionals ought to find out what's really going on in the genre first. The assumptions some people have made in this thread bear no relation whatsoever to the reality of children's publishing.