This came up about a week ago in the kidlitosphere, the new push from England's Education Secretary to isolate books for boys on school library shelves. From a list of 160 titles, libraries will be asked to choose 20 for a specific boys shelf. Here's mostly what they get:
The list, which was drawn up by librarians from the School Library Association, is dominated by high-octane adventure stories which it is expected will appeal to the 11-to-14 age group. It is during these years that boys who were enthusiastic readers at primary school tend to put down their books and forget to pick them up again.
Boy books vs girl books is not a new idea but I'm becoming increasingly conflicted about the it - especially as I happen to have a column of exclusively girl books for the month of June. Partly I just don't like making divisions based on the what gender I think will enjoy a book. No one knows who will enjoy a book (or movie or song); not really. And if you suddenly label a book (like King Solomon's Mines or Treasure Island) as a boy book then aren't you running the risk that girls will not even attempt to read it? I mean by focusing your attention on one, don't you by definition ignore the other?
And what if you get a boy who doesn't like what a bunch of adults have decided boys will like? Where does he go for book ideas? If a boy walks into a library and asks for a book suggestion does the librarian automatically lead him to the boy shelf? And if he looks at those books and wants none of them, does he feel comfortable telling the librarian he doesn't find any of the official boy choices to his liking? Or does he worry that he's not a proper boy? (Whatever the hell that means.)
I mean - is telling librarians what good boy books are really the way to go here? The boys who aren't reading - the ones the studies say we are losing - aren't they the boys who are never making it into the library in the first place?
If you love books as a ten year old what is it that will make you stop loving them as a 12 year old? Is it that you are a boy and you can't find a good adventure book? Or is that your family and friends don't think boys should waste time reading anymore? Is it cute when you're little but as you get older suddenly seen as less macho - as something wimps do - as something girls do?
Oh my.
And what if you are not what society dictates a boy should be like? How do you fit in the boy vs girl division? And did anybody think of that when they put this list together?
I really didn't want to design columns around gender themes. I felt compelled to do the "boys becoming men" column a couple of months ago just because I didn't want to do a conventional coming-of-age column; I really wanted to address that those moments of growing up and being a man are complicated for every boy and there seem to be few books that address the many ways they can be complicated. I liked that the books I chose were all over the map - for boys who liked sports or didn't, boys who were different ages, different ethnicities, different home situations. I thought it was okay to do a gender column in that instance because there are so few books that address that topic effectively.
But for June...well, I was thinking first of a column on romance (now in Eclectica for July) and then maybe one on mysteries (which will be August in Bookslut) but I kept thinking about Leila and how she doesn't really like war books and how when I put together a column on say, historical fiction, there could be a lot of people who just don't read it at all because they don't like historical fiction. So they might be missing something they would really enjoy if they just gave it a chance. I thought that if I went broad on the theme - just covered books of all sorts of genres but all having a female protagonist, then I might get some girls to love SF or hist fiction, or thrillers who otherwise would never have considered reading that sort of book. I thought I could kick some girls out of their ruts.
I thought it might be something to try but now - now, I'm not so sure it was the right thing to try. By doing it this way though I might be scaring some boys away from The White Darkness, because they won't even hear about it or D.A. or Crusader - all books that I think work fine for boys or girls. Ultimately, I'm not sure if I've done a good thing with this column or not, just as I don't know if the British solution is the way to go either.
When you consider a book like the wonderful Parrotfish, about a transgender girl who decides to become a boy in her life and school one day, you have to wonder where that book would go on the shelf - in between the boy and girl books? Or maybe it should just be with all the coming-of-age titles, which is really where it belongs.
Where would the boy or girl who needs Parrotfish so desperately find it if they didn't know it existed? Where would they even know where to look?
It's hard stuff to think about, this choosing books for kids based on gender. I was lucky - I had an older brother so I read all the stuff he liked (westerns, adventure, mysteries, SFF) plus stuff that people bought for me as a girl that I also liked (Louisa May Alcott, Nancy Drew, etc.) I had it all and I guess I wish the same thing for every other kid; the freedom to read what they like, regardless of the gender someone else has decided that book was written for.
May 25
2007
04:42 PM
Amen.
I wish everyone that freedom, too, and it just seems like when adults are the ones trying to draw the lines around what constitutes boy or girl books, they're either trying to tell you how to be a boy or a girl, or they're trying to tell you what a boy or girl IS. And if you don't fit whatever preconceived mold, it seems like you're out of luck, on the outside, again... and isn't there enough of that in adolescence, not to mention LIFE!?
I don't know if this is a good or bad thing either; when I recommend books I usually apply the label of Boy Book if it might even remotely interest a boy, but now I am rethinking the gender divisions in a serious fashion...