1. I realize I am such a boy.I have another confession to make: I'm back in school, taking more graduate-level courses. I only mention this -- not for shock value, not to cause the rolling-of-the-eyes that will be taking place from people who think I'm insane and can't possibly keep up everything I do -- but I mention this because the why chromosome reared its ugly head yesterday in an exchange I had at school, and with one of my counselors.
I found out yesterday that, in my class, I was going to be PART OF A GROUP, and that we were going to COLLABORATE and do GROUPWORK.
Seriously... I wanted to punch someone.
I think there must be, somewhere on the why chromosome a gene that rebels against collaboration and groupwork. I mean, I think we like to be on "teams," but only if our team gets to crush the dreams of another team, break stuff, or kill something with fur on it.
But at school? To collaborate?
No freaking way.
So my counselor told me that she thought the best thing for me to do was proclaim myself as leader of the group (obviously playing on the why chromosome's weakness for the warrior-king archetype).
So I said, okay. Fine. I'll be leader. My first decision is to kick everyone else out of my group except for me.
2. One more study today -- a good one. This was from the journal The Reading Teacher from October, 2009. It was about 5 recommendations to teachers from a struggling boy reader -- about what the teachers could do better if they wanted to get him reading.
The important recommendations: get teachers, parents, and other responsible people in the kid's life to work together and set coordinated examples of reading for him at home and at school; build on past successes -- let the kid stay with a successful teacher for two or more years in order to further a successfully-established learning relationship; connect reading books to the kid's world; let him have a say in what gets read (you hear this one a lot with boys); and, once he finds a topic that he likes, allow him to continue to choose material in that genre.
This was all from a struggling boy reader. Makes a lot of sense.
3. Michael made some relevant points yesterday that I can't disagree with. Okay, maybe he has been told bluntly that YA is marketed toward girls; but, remember, all kinds of data show that girls like boy books just as much as boys do. So, maybe the marketers need to do some more research. After all, if you find something that will appeal to girls and NOT TURN AWAY boys at the same time, you'll increase your potential market share.
I dunno.
The cover thing... well... I've already presented that study showing that boys are more likely to choose a book based initially on its cover. So, Michael's right there, too. If you wrap a book in a cover that scares off boys, you've really got your work cut out for you. Unless, that is, you only care to market what's inside the book to girls.
And you'd probably only do that if you really believed that boys just don't read.
3 comments:
I have two boys, ages 4 and 6, so I have been following (and loving) your series of posts with interest. I've been meaning to voice some thoughts, but this is the first chance I've had to sit down with them (as I said, I have two boys).
Michael has some interesting points about girls and YA. But I disagree about the lack of violence (or other boy appeal) in 'girl' books.
There are a few books, such as LIAR by Justine Larbalestier, that would draw a male audience if it didn't have a girl's face on the cover. Scott Westerfeld's UGLIES trilogy is possibly another one. And I'm sure there are more I'm not thinking of.
Then there is the book BREAK by Hannah Moskowitz. It has plenty of violence and bad language, it has an authentic boy voice, and yet it has plenty of elements that appeal to girls.
The big difference between BREAK and LIAR, though, is that LIAR has a female MC and BREAK has a male MC. It seems that stories with female MC's often end up with pictures of girls on the cover, and stories with male MC's are more abstract. If publishing houses could use the abstract approach for 'girl books with boy appeal,' they would be doubling their audience.
I'm a writer, and I have plenty of stories that are 'girl books with boy appeal.' When they are eventually published, that is the kind of cover I am going to fight for, because I want to see boys given equal opportunities for reading.
Thanks so much for adding to this, Tabitha. Yes, I think the books you mention would have boy appeal, and I wonder why people immediately think of certain titles as being "girl books," unless it only has something to do with the cover art or the marketing behind the title.
And what a BLAST it must be to have a 4- and 6-year old boy in the house. I miss those times.
I think cover art plays a big factor in whether boys will read a book (I think Michael said this at some point). I don't know of any teen boys who would walk around with a book that had a picture of a girl on the cover. Even if the book had the best story in the world, that most all boys would love, walking around with that cover would be a blow to his masculinity. Or am I wrong about that?
I've read that sales are higher when a face is put on the cover (which is why the US edition of LIAR has a photo of a girl on the cover), but it's coming at a price: male readers. That bothers me, because I want my own boys to *want* to read. So far, they can't get enough of books, and I would really like to keep it that way.
And yes, they are *very* fun. The things they say at this age really crack me up. :)
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