Boy YA

Where's all the boy literature? I ask this question sometimes myself. I think most of it got left behind in middle grade literature. There are a few YA books with male protagonists floating around, but I think it is still geared more towards making it marketable towards girls even if the author is male. Girls are where the big bucks are supposedly. Therefore books with male protagonists don't really get a lot of hype compared to the typical-brunette-supposedly average-looking-but-actually-beautiful-and-extremely-powerful protagonists. Nowadays, even if the protagonist is male, the story is largely focused around the love interest who is most likely the aforementioned trope.

Then there are a few of female authors who write boy protagonists and are criticized for making the character's voice unbelievable. Which is why a lot of female writers tend to shy away from it.

I am kind of tired of having writers romanticize a boy's mind to make girls relate to it. Not all guys are artistic and sensitive. Not all guys are childhood best friends who suddenly turn hot and are total boyfriend potential now. Not all boys are dark, sexy mysterious bad boys. Not all guys are loners.

Talk about morning woods. Talk about raging hormones. Talk about self-esteem issues. Focus on having your male character building strong friendships with their guy-friends too. Make your male characters human. Not dreamboats or wetdreams for teenaged girls.

Though I do agree that teenaged male characters are getting the same treatment like female characters have gotten over the years in literature and in media in general, I think we should all work towards making well-rounded male and female characters that all can relate to and not have each gender take turns being treated as 1-dimensional characters.

I used to be a huge advocate for male-centred YA. I used to write a LOT of male MCs. In the past two years or so though, I've really come to value women's stories a lot more than I ever did, and I only have plans for female-centred YA for all the WIPs to come. I went through a huge period of growth and became a lot more comfortable with myself as a woman, and now I'm all about the girl stories, so I really appreciate, now, the fact that most YA is for and about girls.

I do still see the need for boy YA, though, because of things like Liosse saying how much he wanted it when he was that age. I think boy YA could be a really useful thing in teaching boys how to express and feel comfortable with their emotions, which is a beneficial thing for society in general. I just no longer feel like I can be a huge part of it.

Trouble is, even if it's aimed at them, even if it's about them, how many boys want to read YA, as it's described here?
"I think boy YA could be a really useful thing in teaching boys how to express and feel comfortable with their emotions, which is a beneficial thing for society in general"
"Talk about morning woods. Talk about raging hormones. Talk about self-esteem issues. Focus on having your male character building strong friendships with their guy-friends too. Make your male characters human. Not dreamboats or wetdreams for teenaged girls."
"And that was great. But they did not talk about the things that I was going through at that age in the way that YA can talk about those things."
It all sounds horribly educational.
Aside from this site, which skews heavily to people who are/were really into books, how many boys really want to read about emotions and relationships, as opposed to books about doing stuff?
Maybe they'd go for the 'take on the dictatorship' or 'survive the dystopia' stories, but the angle would have to be more like a war story than YA usually goes. I suspect most male readers just move up to adult books.
I'm a girl, and that's the age I made the jump, and for that reason. The stuff in the 'Teen' (it was the dark ages, the '70's) section was either issue books, or dating books. My, how I clung to the few books about teenagers who got jobs, and had things happen. Fortunately, I had science-fiction, which, while almost exclusively about guys, was at least interesting.
Maybe New Adult is a more hopeful field for books that boys will read? It's got sex and more chance of doing aspirational stuff, like learning skills and getting jobs.

frimble3 said:

Trouble is, even if it's aimed at them, even if it's about them, how many boys want to read YA, as it's described here?...It all sounds horribly educational.

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Talking about things that happen in real life, even if it's just in passing, is not being educational. It's one thing if these books were moral specific like some kind of after school special, but that's not the point. It's about having better representation of common ground rather than relying on outdated and untrue gender stereotypes. There's nothing wrong with having super masculine characters who don't cry or have no interest in art or whatever, but there's also nothing wrong with encouraging boys to allow themselves to be more than aggressive muscular sex addicts. It's about positivity and acceptance, not education. Writing with a broader spectrum of character is inclusive of all the variants between individuals, which is why (I think) there are so many girls flocking to YA at the moment. We're talking body acceptance and acceptance of sexuality, and not feeling like we're totally weird because we can see other girls are experiencing the same stuff. Why not give that to the boys as well?

I'm sure it doesn't help that teen boys aren't typically encouraged to read, since reading is often seen as a feminine thing, and nothing is worse for a teen boy than to be equated with a girl.* There's a stigma surrounding YA lit, which seems to be gender related, both from publishers/writers and readers. I find it odd it to expect YA lit to stay stagnant and give NA to the boys, rather than encouraging YA to evolve. Even NA needs to evolve, it can't sustain itself for long on a steady diet of 20-something erotica, which effectively labels 20-somethings as vapid and wild. Young Adult is a category, it's not specifically for boys or girls- it's neutral and should be handled as such. This would mean including morning wood and male self-esteem alongside girls actually being friends and having the period check.

I love how awesome literary girls have become in the last few years, and though I write primarily female MCs I don't have a problem with boy books coming into YA - they are sorely needed - but I'm not the person to write them (at the moment). What would become an issue is if, like John Green, the male perspective came to overshadow the female perspective in YA rather than coinciding. YA needs to be healthy because it represents an important time span in our lives, a time when we are malleable and likely to feel out of place. It's unfair to expect boys to read up where male adults are simply stoic and female characters remain flat, rather than make their age category accessible.**


* Personal experience in a public school setting has shown me how allergic boys can be to anything non-violent or non-skateboard related.

** THE OUTSIDERS was super important to me when I was a teen because it showed me that dudes aren't just tough guys, but actually care about one another and didn't think about sex all the time. They have bigger problems, too.

This is a great follow on to the diversity in kidlit conversations that have been happening recently. My nine year old son is an avid reader of fantasy and sf. I hope he has good books to jump to in a couple of years when he's done with every middle grade series that interests him, but doesn't want to read YA with a female protagonist (Maybe he won't mind that then.) We are all set to pick and choose adult books with him that don't get too adult, if necessary.

I'm also very grateful now for my librarians who help us make sure he doesn't pick up an upper middle grade he can't handle the content of yet.

I think the problem is that there is a fairly sexist assumption that boys are muscular sex addicts, to be honest. First it assumes that girls in the age bracket don’t get crazy horny just as often, when the whole romance segment of YA could be said to cater specifically to girls being horny.

Second it assumes that boys are predatory creatures who will be overruled by their penis in all things. If one can not write books about well-rounded males who are not ruled by their penises, maybe one shouldn’t write such books. It is going to sound incredibly false to boys, and maybe that is why boys go straight to adult literature rather than read YA.

Having had the privilege of raising my nephew from age fifteen or so, it sort of removed the lazy assumptions I’ve built up over the years. He’s an avid reader, but he reads adult literature. There’s no hint that reading is “girly”. But he’s just not interested in YA as such regardless of how much I’ve tried to dig into why.

And it's one of those self perpetuating cycles, they say boys won't read YA, so they only put out a few YA's for boys (and those with appeal to girls) and the boys who might read YA walk away from it because there are no books for them (of course there are some books for them, but they get lost in the sea of girl books).

School librarians and teachers are ALWAYS on the lookout for books that appeal to boys, particularly boys who are reluctant readers, but it seems bookstores are less enthusiastic about that demographic--for good reason since they rarely to never go into bookstores. ETA please not I said reluctant boy readers, not all boy readers, boys and men certainly do visit bookstores!

And then there are the statistics that show even though male authors are only a small percentage of YA authors, they are more likely to win awards/be on the bestseller lists (Can't find the info right now, but will look up later if anyone wants me to).

I think it may be because of the unfortunate stigma that comes with reading (for boys, especially), as well as the appearance of YA being mostly populated by female characters. Also, unfortunately, anything with girls is seen as something to keep away from. ("Girl cooties", etc).

There may also be the competition with video games, comic books, internet, sports, tv/movies, etc. When I was a teen, I saw some teen boys more interested in video games and movies than reading. (Of course, some may read in private to avoid teasing, I guess..?) Edit: I'm one of those women who love video games and tv/movies, so books have to compete for my attention as well, lol.

Wasn't YA a new category several years back? Maybe, with time, if more authors wrote more stories with male characters, YA will have more male characters? Still, there's that whole "reading" stigma thing in (U.S.) culture/society...

I wouldn't be one of those authors, though. I prefer female main characters, for the most part. I relate to them more, since I identify as female and all. (I do read male characters like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, etc. I just prefer female characters.)

When I was a teen, I didn't read teen books. I read either MG or went straight to the adult books. Maybe some boys do that, too?

I wasn't (and still not) very interested in the teen plots and love triangles* and teen angst that seems to be in many teen books, so I usually skip to the adult sections. (But, then again, back then, my mother said I was "mature" for my age and sometimes I read at the higher reading levels.)

*Edit: I'm not against love triangles or romance. I love romances! I even enjoy the occasional love triangle. I just don't want it to become an expected requirement of all YA stories. Sexual tension and unrequited love can exist, but not every romance has to be an overwhelming plot line. I enjoy romances when they are the main plot, but I dislike them when they are a subplot that overshadows the life-threatening main plot line or the more interesting plot lines and worldbuilding. I also don't like obnoxious, arrogant, or stalker-ish Love Interests (which was found in paranormal romances and older romances).

Having raised 1 girl (avid reader) and 2 boys (one an avid reader and one who runs from any book in a 3 block radius) I imagine it's more of a marketing issue.

Several of you have raised the issue of boys jumping from MG to adult. That is my real-world experience. My reader went from everything MG to Lord of the Rings and Fight Club. His female friends told him he had to read Twilight. He hated every second of it. After that it was classics (yay) and the lowbrow bro-humor aimed at 20-somethings (grrrr).

Bottom line, the recommendations that came his way weren't YA aimed at guys. My narrow slice of experience (with my kids and their friends) tells me boys in general do read less at that life stage than girls do, and they're not really interested in the angsty stories. In the words of my son re: Twilight: "I get enough of that in real life." Boy-directed stories are a hole in the genre IMO, but without the weight of readers clamoring for more, I don't know how likely it is to be filled.

Having been an adolescent boy, and having known quite a few adolescent boys, from my limited experience boys go straight from kids lit to adult.

Early adolescent boys are mostly interested in adventure, technology and ideas, so they read (adult) Science Fiction, Crime Fiction, and Adventure Fiction. Also, most of the boys actually love movies and computer games and comics more than books. They love visual media, because they are visually oriented (why do you think men watch more porn, while women read porn?).

So, YA being mostly a category of problem literature (the problems of growing up, the problem of having to choose between two boys etc.), boys are not interested in that. Boys want to do stuff, look at stuff, explore derelict buildings or foreign landscapes, and if they read, they want ideas, mysteries, riddles, facts, not emotional wish-wash. And since most of the books on the YA shelf are full of that stuff, they don't go seeking for the handful of exceptions. They rather go to the adult book shelf where they know they don't have to deal with books about teen girls making unbelievably inane relationship decisions.

Boys mostly don't do love triangles. Most boys don't do pining after girls that reject them. Hell, the vast majority of boys don't do love during much of adolescence anyway, because, as we all know and psychology as shown, boys develop about two years more slowly than girls on the social, sexual and relationship level (which is why girls have older boyfriends, mostly). So boys start to get interested in the main content of YA literature when they are too old to be interested in a teen look at it. When they start reading about relationships, they read adult literature, because by then they are almost adult. And as many here have pointed out: kids read up.

So, in sum, the 14 year old boy reads adult SF, and the 17 year old boy does not see a reason why he should turn back from adult to teen lit.

There are literally hundreds of studies (see scholar.google.com/scholar?q=boys+read) on the differences in reading habits between girls and boys:

- boys read less books than girls
- boys read more newspapers and non-fiction (mostly on animals and science) than girls
- girls read more family stories, romance and historical fiction
- boys read comic books, baseball cards, magazines and other non-book reading matter, instead of books
- and so on

There are also studies on how boys tend to read adult fiction instead of teen fiction:

- boys are "more likely to be readers of exclusively 'adult' fiction; girls are more likely to be readers of children's and teenage fiction" (Coles, M., & Hall, C. (2002). Gendered readings: Learning from children’s reading choices. Journal of Research in Reading, 25(1), 96-108.))

... you referring to their interests as "wish-wash" and "girls making inane relationship decisions".

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That was not phrased well. It is not my perception of YA, but my representation of how many teen boys' perceive much of it.

* * *

Many boys don't read YA. And because YA is mostly read by girls, girls are the protagonists of YA, because girls like books about girls.

And that's where John Green excells: he appears to be writing about boys, but in fact he doesn't. His male protagonists are for the most part not living their own lives but preoccupied with observing girls, describing what those girls do, and how they are affected by it. John Green writes books about strong and intriguing girls from the perspective of emotionally weak and dependent boys. And that is not a pleasant perspective for most adolescent boys!

About the boys and reading thing, I as a male feel I should weigh in. In MY experience, there is, in fact, a grain of truth to the studies ect..and I am living evidence. While I read now, back when I was in high school and even younger I didn't read novels at all beyond what was mandated by the school for me to read. Now, I read a lot, but not fiction. I was knee-deep in non-fiction in HS, mostly of a political stripe...and of course I read a LOT of manga as well. However, novels? Beyond Harry Potter which I think practically everybody read, I didn't touch them....until I got into Magic the Gathering. Once I started to become obsessed with that card game, I started reading the storyline books based around it and was like "Hey...this isn't half bad.." In the end it took a card game to get me into reading novels...go figure.

So from my experience I while I cannot speak for every guy out there, at least during most of my HS years I didn't really read many novels.....and the guys I was friends with really didn't either unless it was something like Atlas Shrugged that they where just reading for the politics/philosophy. Yet, that does not mean that we don't like reading, either. It's just the pattern I observed. Also, I am not a "typical male" either...if it means anything to this conversation I have ADHD among other "disabilities" and ADHD isn't exactly compatible with a slow and attention-demanding activity like reading novels....it's much more conducive to, say , manga or comic book reading with all it's flashy visuals and fast pace...which may be the reason that I didn't read that many novels in HS. Of course, just because I was not really into novels in HS, and studies show similar patterns with other males, this does not mean there is no male market.

It just means it's likely more of a niche' market, and may have to be relegated to self-published works, at least until it can be proven to publishers that the smaller market can still turn a profit. I think ultimately that's why none exist. It's not so much a lack of writers as it is just business as usual. Publishers likely don't feel there is enough of a market to really take or push "male YA." You have to remember the number one goal of publishers is to make money, and expending funds to appeal to a niche' audience is generally poor business sense unless you know for sure that niche' audience is rabid/the kind who will spend big....and the audience for Male YA, at least to publishers, is not.

Daniel Kraus' Rotters. The Chaos Walking trilogy. Barry Lyga's I Hunt Killers. Paolo Bacigalupi's Shipbreaker. Those are a few YA titles with male protagonists I've read that don't even remotely conform to the "YA is about love triangles and mushiness" stereotype.

(Though, given the entirety of 19th-century literature and much of the 20th-century canon, I find it hard to buy the notion that such preoccupations are exclusively feminine. Proust? Stendhal? Goethe? James? To go back a little further, Richardson, who one could argue created the prototype for Twilight with his best-seller Pamela? Unrequited love and love triangles loom large in those male-authored classics. Hell, even Catcher in the Rye has its mushy aspects.)

But back to "reluctant readers," the ones who won't read those classics. (I know they are many; I've taught them in college.) In my generation, a lot of boys seem to have gone straight from MG fiction to Stephen King. I suspect truly horrifying YA horror is something they might like. Like the aforementioned Rotters, which is an extraordinarily gruesome tale about father-son bonding, though maybe that's also too literary for broad appeal.

Same with SF like Shipbreaker; I've heard grown men discussing this and Chaos Walking without seeming to realize (or not wanting to acknowledge) that they were reading YA.

As a male, I can say I also jumped straight from MG to adult literature and it happened at a young age (first adult book was Legend by David Gemmel at 13, quickly followed by Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit/Robert Jordan). As has been said before on this thread, for me personally, I wanted books with adventure, in imaginative worlds, fantastical situations, etc. I was a 3 sport athelete through high school and certainly never thought reading was "girly" though I will say from interacting with other boys my age they certainly didn't read as often as me.


Maybe if Percy Jackson was around when I was hitting that stage in reading I'd have gone with that. I loved Harry Potter (though that's like saying you should breath every now and then) but when the first thing I found that interested me fell in adult fantasy and science fiction I saw no reason to go back to YA.

I've noticed that there are quite a few male authors and characters in YA fantasy, especially when it's fantasy (not paranormal romance masquerading as fantasy). Some in science fiction, too. There's also a fair amount of multiple point of view books, splitting time between male and female characters.

I'm not sure about contemporary because I don't read it.

I can only go on personal experience. As a kid, I grew up reading the Narnia series, LOTR, and other male-centered novels. That's what I knew forty-something years back and it's what I liked.

When the shift occurred to girls being the center of all things I can't say. I don't think that having a female MC is a bad thing at all, by the way. In fact, I find it refreshing. However, if the aim is to get more young dudes to read, then shouldn't there be more novels to fit that section of YA? Just a thought. I know there are some (as listed above)...maybe there are a lot more. I haven't done a poll so I can't say for sure.

At any rate, everything I've written with the exception of the Lindsay/Jo trilogy has had a male MC written from his POV. A couple of my upcoming novels, Catnip and Master Fantastic have male MC's, and a couple of projects I'm trying to sell now (Picture (im)perfect and Star Maps) also have male MC's. I'll see how it goes. Writing from a girl's POV is fun, but admittedly, it's a LOT more difficult (for me). Nevertheless, it's a challenge I welcome.

I had also assumed that boys didn't want to read about a female protag, but one of my author friends says I'm wrong. Her series is fantasy adventure with a active female protag. It was written as YA, but her publishers shifted it to MG for marketing.

She says that around half her readers - going by appearances and fan-mail - are boys. They like the action. They don't care that it's a heroine and not a hero.

I have three sons, 15, 12 and almost 8. They read, but hate romance at all costs. That is a problem in YA. They would rather read younger than read romance.

Maze Runner is amazing, Percy Jackson, they didn't get Harry Potter. Teen loved Odyssey, but not so much Romeo and Juliet.

I do think more Boy YA is needed. You need to write a great book!

I'd have to agree that it's not so much about the gender of the main character. It's about the content of the plot. That, for example, is why many boys like The Hunger Games. Yes, there's a love triangle, but it's not the main focus. There's plenty of action there.

In fact, that might be why something like The Hunger Games was so successful. It has plot elements that appeal to different kinds of readers.

rwm4768 said:

I'd have to agree that it's not so much about the gender of the main character. It's about the content of the plot. That, for example, is why many boys like The Hunger Games. Yes, there's a love triangle, but it's not the main focus. There's plenty of action there.

In fact, that might be why something like The Hunger Games was so successful. It has plot elements that appeal to different kinds of readers.

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Yes, that's true. Many boys (and girls!) enjoy action and adventure plots.

My sister was a big fan of the "Legend of Korra" tv series, which is a sort of fantasy series that has a female protagonist. I vaguely remembered my sister saying that the showrunners had some difficulty convincing the network to greenlight the show, because the network was worried about whether a show with a female protagonist would attract/repel their target male audience. However, once they did a focus group study, the network found out that boys enjoyed the show, even with the female main character. I enjoyed this show, too. It has action, adventure, magic, humor, and relatable characters.

I've read a lot of YA and am writing my own now. I'm male, as is my MC. I may be in a minority, but I see the stories more for themselves than for the genders. Most problems faced transcend biological sex. I enjoyed female MCs as much as Charlie in Perks. Overall, I think the story should just work, however it is.

I think it's kind of exhausting to try and compartmentalize different groups of people into different categories of YA and to separate everything based on gender and the ideas about it we've built up that may or may not necessarily be true. YA is YA because of the age of the POV character, not the gender.

You can try to say that YA is the breeding ground for stories involving love triangles and other tropes we've decided belong to women-centric stories but those building blocks will be found across dozens of different books, regardless of their arbitrary categorization. It's actually kind of annoying that we've decided, as a culture, that a romance plot is an inherently female thing. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a romantic subplot in a movie or a book be written off by other people (even women!) as fodder for the female audience that doesn't have any consequence.

And to be fair, I'm not sure if female protagonists DO dominate YA. Some of the popular stuff (The Fault In Our Stars, The Hunger Games, various knockoffs of The Hunger Games) is, but The Perks of Being A Wallflower, Looking For Alaska, and Harry freaking Potter sort of stand out.

There's a study commonly quoted in feminist theory that found that a stifling amount of men seem to think that women are dominating a conversation, estimating her taking up 60 - 70 percent of the conversation, when the fact of the matter was that she was only speaking about 30 percent of the time. I think this is a similar thing. We're so used to seeing male voices in our fiction that when female-led stories are successful it feels more pronounced to us, and we overestimate how much of our mass media is led by women.

I should note, though, that I don't know any concrete numbers on the male YA MC to female YA MC ratio and I could very well be way off-base. Just a theory.

Keyan said:

I had also assumed that boys didn't want to read about a female protag, but one of my author friends says I'm wrong. Her series is fantasy adventure with a active female protag. It was written as YA, but her publishers shifted it to MG for marketing.

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I'm kind of relieved, and kind of sad, to see the experience I had with my son mirrored here. (The jump from MG to adult) Kenyan's post is kind of the point. To market to a broader audience, the publisher down-aged it to MG. My sons both loved Hunger Games. It isn't necessarily about the gender of a YA protagonist for my boy readers, but the extraneous drama. And, again, I'm not convinced there's a market out there clamoring to be filled. If there isn't, the publishers won't push something new. If the market is there, hopefully it'll get catered to. I would have loved to buy more.

rwm4768 said:

In fact, that might be why something like The Hunger Games was so successful. It has plot elements that appeal to different kinds of readers.

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And it has strong male half-protagonists! (I don't want to call them "secondary characters", because they are more to the front than that.) For much of the books I was more into Gale and especially Peeta than into Katniss (whom I seriously despised sometimes). And then K is more of a boy-girl than girl-girl anyway and not much concerned with girly stuff which makes it easy to ignore her sex while she's doing the survival thing.