Argh, that should be **19th century. ** :smack:
I think that, while there are obviously exceptions, Ms. Allen is more accurate than not.
My own son (now almost 20) has definately read plenty of books with female protagonists. However, this is mostly because he got much of his reading off of my shelves. When he chose a book from another source (the library or bookstore) he would typically choose one with a male protagonist. And, although he read most of my books, his favorites among them were the ones with male protagonists. For instance, he read and enjoyed all of the Little House books, but his favorite was Farmer Boy. And he read and enjoyed all of Beverly Cleary’s books, but preferred the Henry Huggins series to the Ramona books. He read all of my Rumer Godden books (you won’t find many boys who’ve done that!), but his favorite was Home is the Sailor, which had a boy doll as the protagonist.
He doesn’t read as much fiction as an adult, but he has read and enjoyed my Fannie Flagg books, and some of my other female-written books. But books he buys himself tend to be written by men, about men. His favorite author is Steinbeck.
Ahem. I had the requisite crush on Melissa Gilbert as Laura Ingalls when I was a lad, so naturally I resented ol’ Almanzo Wilder. I was prepared to dislike the Little House book about young Manly the most.
Apparently, this was a bit of a pattern with me. I think I actually preferred books with female leads. OK, I read plenty of books with male leads, but I read Little Women, the Oz books, the Narnia books (in which Lucy & Jill were as much identification characters as most of the boys)…& while I read the Nancy Drew books, I never got into the Hardy Boys.
Sometimes, that the character is a kid is more important than what sex the character is. Kitty Pryde was always my reader identification point in Days of Future Past & Dave Cockrum’s second X-Men run.
And I definitely got into books written for young women as a way of getting into the female mind. I forget the names, now…
So, that’s me. However, I don’t claim to be typical by any stretch. Certainly the people marketing this stuff thought, “This is for girls, this other for boys.” I just broke the rules, though I didn’t realize it at first. Maybe because I didn’t have a father who would call me a faggot if I read “girl books”–which seems to be the norm.
Interesting debate. I’m a female children’s author, and I go into schools a lot to speak to children about my books. I tend to write about young teenage girls, and though I never say ‘I only write for girls’ (obviously!), there’s always a boy who puts his hand up and asks, ‘Don’t you write anything for boys?’
So then I give them my talk about how I write stories for children, not specifically for girls or for boys. They look at my front covers and (quite rightly) aren’t convinced, as publishers very definitely separate work into ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ books, and market accordingly. Boys who do read my work tend to really enjoy it, but the pastel front covers mean that most self-respecting boys won’t go near them. Certainly my fan e-mail is 100% from girls.
In my experience, boys are perfectly happy to read about female protagonists, as long as the front cover isn’t ‘girly’. If it is, they risk being taunted by their friends, and at that very sensitive pre-pubescent age, this isn’t something that many of them feel strong enough within themselves to risk. Boys who are much younger (say 6 years old or so) probably don’t feel this sort of pressure to the same extent, and older teenage boys probably don’t, either. But from about 9-14, I’d say there’s a lot of peer pressure on boys to act a certain way, and that this extends to the books they read. Conversely, I know a lot of young girls who read books with male protagonists, as well as books with female protagonists.
Perhaps I should have stated that Mary Higgens Clark is bad enough to turn someone off books by ANYONE.
What offends me about her is she presents her characters as moral, strong, independent, but always seem to turn them into morally lacking, weak dependent, victims.
Yeah, dreck is dreck. I’m not above some types. I get positively giddy when a new Dean Koontz book comes out.
KEEP READING! 
Certainly there’s some truth to the assertation, but I have to wonder how much of it is the fault of the publishers. “Everyone knows” in the industry that boys don’t like girl books, but that girls will read either, so there’s a push to market them that way. Which marketing, of course, just reinforces any trend that might (or might not) have been there to begin with.
While the main character being the same gender as the reader helps some with identification, it’s far from the only factor. Yes, I identified more closely with Charles Wallace than with Meg, but then, I identified more with either of them than with Calvin. And I identify much more strongly with Hermione than I do with Harry or Ron.
Speaking of Hermione, Harry, and Ron, by far the most successful children’s author, among either sex, is a woman (and despite being billed as “J. K.”, everyone knows it). I think that should put to rest the notion that boys have some aversion to books written by women.
But the key is that she was advised by her publisher to go as “J. K.” before anyone knew who she was, because the publisher didn’t think boys would want to read her books if her full name appeared as the author.
Exactly. Nobody thought for one second that her books would become as popular as they did (check the size of the first printing and the consequent value of copies), and her publisher did everything possible to get over the stigma of their being written by an women. Chronos is applying 20-20 hindsight.
Sure, the publisher probably thought that. Nobody’s disputing that some folks think that. But the factual record shows quite clearly that the publisher (and others who thought the same thing) was wrong.
I wonder if the books would have been so popular if Harry had been Harriet, though.
We don’t know if they were wrong, since it can’t be redone with a feminine name from the outset.
I know that this thread is a few days old now, but I have an interesting data point to add. I was talking with my mom yesterday, and since she taught second and third grade for many years, I mentioned this thread and asked her opinion. She said that there might be some truth to the claim, but that all of her third-grade students, boys and girls alike, absolutely loved the Addy books. You know, from the American Girl series, with the dolls that go with the books? She speculated that the fact that Addy was black helped the students identify with her (she taught at an inner-city public school, and 99% of her students were black), and Addy’s escape from slavery was enough of an action hook to draw the boys in. Apparently, the Addy books were so popular, that many of her boys started reading the other American Girl books as well, after they’d finished the Addy ones.