I'ma gonna be cranky bout this one

Quotable from today's Shelf Awareness:
Scieszka @ NBF No. 2: What do boys want to read? The Washington Post shared some National Book Festival observations from our author du jour: "'We've had this problem with boys not achieving and reading for a long time,' Scieszka says, noting that although we're generalizing about boys, there are always exceptions. 'For the longest time, you couldn't even say boys and girls were different. It was taboo in the educational world.' But different they are, biologically and socially, he asserts. Boys need 'move time,' which they're getting less and less of in school these days. 'That's how they're built,' he says."
Scieszka also told the Post that "the biggest change we can all make in giving boys a love of reading is to expand our definition of reading beyond fiction. . . . [Boys would] rather read nonfiction or humor, graphic novels, science fiction, action adventure, audio books, or online reading and magazines."

Right, boys have never had enough to read, uh huh. Great. Um, is that why in so many of my classes, the protagonists were mostly male? Is that why, when we discussed Widow of the South and its plot, we determined that men would never read it because a) there's a woman on the cover, and b) the title refers to a woman as a main character? Is that why young women feel it's normal to be marginalized in the media, why eating disorders are through the roof, and why young women feel they must be in a romantic relationship to be fulfilled, because their selections while younger reduce them to Gossip Girls, anorexics, cutters, rape victims or otherwise girls in crisis?

Boys don't read because they're coddled and encouraged to NOT read. They're encouraged to be "boys" and to pick on the boys who act like "girls" (i.e., boys who read). Boys are told that reading a book with a girl protagonist is a wussy thing to do, so they won't read those books. Boys are told that they need to like sports and gross things, so that's what they gravitate towards. Boys are told that reading is boring, and they believe it.

How many times I rec'd a book to a boy that had a girl main character and he said yes: ZERO. How many times I did the same, reverse the genders: COUNTLESS.

I've had to point out that certain authors and series characters have actually strong female characters because they're SO difficult to find. And the older you get, the worse it is. When you're a little girl, you have Eloise, Judy Moody, Clementine...you have these independent trouble-makers who shine brightly in a dull universe. They think for themselves, act for themselves, and strive to solve their problems by themselves.

Then you get to be in the middle-grades (as in, 10-12), and you have American Girl (obsessed with being part of a crowd, external fulfillment, greater-good mumbo-jumbo) and the start of the girl-in-crisis lit (i.e., Cut and Perfect, about self-mutilation and eating disorders, respectively). Then you get to YA, and there's a bit of a split. You have the superficial, hyper-sexualized, desensitized Clique Lit genre, and you have the overly traumatic, hyper-emotional girl-on-the-precipice genre. The former, you'll be wondering just how often Princess shags those ill-read pretty boys she's always drooling over; the other, you wonder when your little drama queen will finally call it quits on this mortal coil. Of course, I'm being facetious, but not by much.

So it's not just boys who are having a tough time of it. Girls don't have it much better. In so much male-oriented teen reading, females are marginalized, victimized, or simply non-existent. Look at the classics: The Chocolate War (a dead mother, a random girl the main character really wants to fuck, and a manipulative princess); anything by Chris Crutcher (women, without fail, are viciously victimized by a supposed loved one), Speak (the protagonist is raped and brutally ostracized and bullied at her school), The Outsiders (other than preachy Cherry and a couple of absentee cheating SOs, women are non-existent in this boy-land), anything Judy Blume (my God, what else could happen to these poor girls??).

Even looking at successful hits today, especially the Twilight series, the problem continues unabated: Bella is emotionally wrecked, assaulted (twice! by the same character!), manipulated (especially by the character who assaults her!), lied to, purposely put in danger and is generally a weak-minded and pathetic character. Give me a break, people.

Ok, I'm stepping off the soap-box. It just really gets my goat whenever anyone sits there and says there's no reading out there for boys. There's TONS of reading for them. Just no one will tell them it's there.