I’m reading What Are Little Girls Made Of?: A Guide to Female Role Models in Children’s Books by Marjorie Allen and she makes this claim more than once: girls will read books with boy protagonists, but boys won’t read books with girl protagonists. My gut tells me that it’s absurd, but then, I’ve never been a boy.
So what do people think, is this just sensationalism, or will most boys really reject a book simply because the main character is a girl instead of a boy?
Well as a boy I loved Little House on the Prairie when I was a mid-teen. I was quite depressed when I finished the series, like she left me for another guy.
I read the entire Incarnations of Immortality series where Fate and Nature were both women.
Evaine MacRorie was one of my favorite characters in Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni novels, although her father was even cooler.
Most novels I read though had male leads. But I think that was mostly because most stories already had male leads. I don’t think I ever had any preference just so long as the cover looked cool.
Whoops, I also read many Nancy Drew mysteries. My grandmother had a huge set. A really cool edition too, hard covers from the 50s I believe.
Sadly she gave them all away.
Well, I read voraciously as a child. That included lots of rereading of course. I’m trying to remember what all I read and it’ll also depend on what the cutoff age is. This included everything written by Beverly Cleary, The Hobbit, most of the Narnia books, and a lot of other books. Seems to me that it’s most likely sensationalism, at least when you’re like me and read everything you can get your hands on.
Ooh, and I really enjoyed Amelia Bedelia and Pippi Longstockings as a younger lad.
By the way, there’s a rule of Dope somewhere that whenever you state something your thread will consist of those who can point out single instances of those who violate what you say. Sorry.
Most of the others boys my age didn’t read, girls too. I basically went through my school library’s entire fantasy section but no one else in the school read like I did. In fact even for me my dad forced me to read as an alternative to grounding. Which definitely worked out like he wanted.
I’d say it would depend on the parenting. If parents make a big deal out of boyness then it seems like the kids would too. My parents did not and I don’t believe I ever did either. Man, did Love playing house with the girls.
Wow-is that BS. Cleary, some Roald Dahl, LIWilder, Frances Hodgson Burnett (Little Princess etc)–all female protagonists. The Pern series starts out with one, A Wrinkle in Time has one etc. Oz, Narnia–there are lots of strong girls out there for both genders to enjoy.
I find this kind of black and white thinking distasteful and so limiting. And I would hope the author backed up her claim with something.
I also read a few of the Little House books as a kid. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some general truth the statement.
I believe I’ve read that men, in general, tend not to read books with female authors and that boys, in general, tend not to read books with female heroes. We can think of exceptions, but I think it’s really true. That isn’t to say it’s conscious bias.
In general, too, girls read more than boys.
So I turned out to be gay, but this is definitely not true in my case.
When I was a kid, I loved all the “Little House” books, Nancy Drew (which was, in my defense, mainly because I finished all the Hardy Boys in the library- maybe that’s not really a defense), Amelia Bedelia, Alice in Wonderland (which remains one of my favorites to this day), Cam Jensen mysteries, and many others I’m sure. When I got a little older, like early teens, I graduated to reading Agatha Christie novels, and I particularly liked Miss Marple. So yeah, totally not true.
I’ve found a couple of cites, not as strongly stated as the one in the OP:
From http://www.ccfi.educ.ubc.ca/publication/insights/v08n03/articles/genderequity.html
I really liked the Oz books when I was a kid, though in fairness, over the course of the series IIRC as many of the books had male leads as female.
I don’t remember particularly thinking of it at the time, though I did not want to read what seemed to be explicitly “girl” series, like Nancy Drew or The Babysitter’s Club. (Actually, I confess, I did read one of the latter series; my older sister loved the books, and I was looking for something to read one time, and she recommended a scary entrance in the series that she thought I’d like – I think one of the girls got kidnapped or something.) But if a thing didn’t seem to be explicitly “girly,” I’d read it, even if it did have a female lead. I read all the Roald Dahl books, for example, and didn’t think twice about reading “Matilda.”
Oddly, I feel a bit more self-conscious about it now as an adult! I recently read the first in Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum mystery series, and I felt slightly embarassed to be reading a book with a female first person narrator – stupid societal molding! 
The other day at Borders, my 7 yo son picked up a “young readers” version of Secret Garden and asked me if it was good. I said it was about a young girl and her boy cousin who is in a wheel chair. They discover this secret garden and how she helps him walk again. My son thought it sounded good and was going to get it. Then this guy walks up behind us and says, “The Secret Garden? That’s totally a girl’s book, buy him something like Tom Sayer.”
So of course my son didn’t want to read it. I was really angry at this guy. It’s a good book, not overly girly, it just happens that the main character is a girl. My son did enjoy when I read to him The Wizard of Oz and Little House in the Big Woods. As a matter of fact he’s read a few books with girls as main characters and never even gave it a thought until this jerk at Borders said something.
Characters are creations of the author and can be expected to reflect societal mores to some extent. Might it be possible that in many cases, the female protagonists are given less-interesting personalities and roles in order to conform to gender stereotypes? Until the last couple decades, strong, intelligent heroines were difficult to find in any medium.
My favorite children’s book was Wrinkle in Time, by a mile. I also loved the Little House books. I don’t remember caring about the gender of the protagonsts.
I read books with male and female protagonists when I was a kid, but I ENJOYED the books with the male protagonists more simply because I could identify more with them. As a pre-teen boy, girls are a nuisance at worst and a mystery at best. That all changes when puberty hits, of course…
Bookseller, here.
I can’t figure out whether a boy [at age, say, 9 to 12] is rejecting books with girl protagonists because of the books, or because an old bat is recommending them. Sometimes he’ll go for 'em, but it’s usually a pretty hard sell. The other day I had a kid look askance at “The Golden Compass” because he thought it looked like a “girl book.” I told him it was pretty exciting and had armored bears and stuff and he did agree to try it – warily. More often though, it’s no dice. Nine times out of ten, if the kid hasn’t read it yet, he’ll go for one of the Bartimaeus books or “Eragon” instead.
It’s an absolute given in the publishing industry that boys won’t generally read books by female authors or with female lead characters. Obviously there are exceptions but just take a look at books published aimed toward girls and those aimed toward boys. I’m not talking classic literature; I’m talking Sweet Valley High vs. Star Wars. That’s where 99% of the sales of teen-oriented books are. The divisions are huge.
For that matter, go through any thread about favorite books here on the Dope. Posts by males are overwhelmingly about male authors. Posts by females tend to be more evenhanded.
When it comes to mysteries, the split is larger. Most women read books by women but very few men ever do.
And in science fiction it’s near absolute. The sf readership here on the Dope is 99% male and read 99% male authors.
Chick lit and virtually all romance books are written by women and read by women. Most spy thrillers/war novels are written by men and read by men.
The incredibly huge divisions between what fiction men read and what fiction women read starts with grade schoolers and continues until death. There is some overlap, in some categories, and some authors, but proportionately it’s small.
If if J. K. Rowling had called herself Joanne and written books about Henrietta the wizard girl, nobody would have heard of her and she wouldn’t be a billionaire. Guaranteed.
That’s an interesting remark in light of the complaints some posters (and non-posters, of course) have made regarding the way females come off in Rowling’s books.
I’d say her books are strongly male-centric. Is that what you mean?
Star Wars novels are not aimed towards boys the way Sweet Valley High is aimed towards females. And while neither are serious literature as you said, Star Wars is practically Hamlet in comparison to the dreck that is Sweet Valley High and the various spin-offs.
They are, but I’ve seen it explained more fully. There’s so much Harry Potter material on the boards that I’m not sure how to look for an example.