Between the ages of twelve and fourteen, I read a lot. Sure, I played some video games and watched a lot of TV, too (we didn’t have cable, so I stacked a couple of VCRs together and copied several movies that I watched a thousand times) but, I’d get bored, eventually, and I’d read.
At 17, I looked like this and still wanted to read.
By fourteen, I’d read through all the fantasy I could handle. I’d torn through I am the Cheese and Separate Peace and The Chocolate Wars and dipped into Salinger beyond Catcher in the Rye, although I couldn’t really get it. Then I plunged into Vonnegut, which was good, but… I slowed down a bit, got less interested — there were almost no contemporary books, starring boys, that spoke to my central, very specific, teenaged concerns, which were largely existential: who am I? What is my place in the world? What am I supposed to do? What the hell’s wrong with me, because I know something is seriously wrong?
In some ways, I was a pretty mainstream kid: I played sports. I played in the orchestra (bad cellist). I joined clubs, etc. I looked good on paper. But, at the same time, I didn’t feel normal. I was paranoid. My feelings were bruised a lot. I had the sense that I didn’t understand the world. I showered twice a day, but always felt dirty. I always felt on the outside of something. Unpleasant. These weren’t terrible times, at all, but I often felt terrible. I could’ve used a good book…
Oh! I was so alone… Um, wrong, dork.
Having taught 18 and 19-year-olds for the last six years, I’ve come to the understanding that this generalized sense of somehow being unfit is the most generalizable aspect of teendom. It does not matter what demographic the kid comes from. What gender. What clique or sub-group of that clique. When my students write about high school, most write about themselves as feeling like dorks, being dorks, standing on the outside looking in.
These days, there are lots of titles geared for teen girls that speak to this outsiderness. There are not many for boys. Why?
It is commonly understood in the book business that boys stop reading around the age of twelve. Boys read Harry Potter, but stop after that. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series is wildly popular among 10-year-olds, but then boys stop reading. Is this true?
When I was growing up, there wasn’t really a YA market, yet. The few books that were aimed at me, I read, and I loved, and I read again (Vision Quest, for instance). I’d have read a thousand of these kinds of titles if they were available. Now, there is a giant YA market, but there are still relatively few books that intend to speak directly to boys. Why?
Again, the conventional wisdom: boys stop reading at 12.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid directly addresses the dorkiness of growing up boy. And, even as an adult, I totally get Diary of a Wimpy Kid, enjoy the humor, but that book is not for a sixteen-year-old. The extensions of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid vibe into the YA market (where more serious conflict can be shown) are few and far between… why?
Boys stop reading at 12?
My son is a smart thirteen-year-old. He devoured Harry Potter as a middle grade reader. Around the same time, he devoured any number of MG fantasy series. Then he went through puberty and his concerns changed. He stopped reading. We couldn’t figure out why. As I’ve started writing YA, I’ve handed him titles I’ve come across I think he might like (I really can only dig up a handful of books — King Dork, Going Bovine, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, anything by John Green, plus a few more — that suit him). When I give him one of these, he is happily through it in a day or two, loves the thing, has no where else to go, then goes back to not reading much.
He’s older than 12.
My son runs with a crew of kids that play sports, play music, film and edit really goofy, hilarious video, are obviously smart, and don’t read much even though they all read until they were 12. Is it because they’re biologically/chemically incapable picking up books now that they’ve hit publerty? I don’t think so.
This is problematic.
You can’t wade through a week of news without seeing something about the importance of reading to academic success in high school and college. It’s maybe the key factor. I see it everyday in classes. I teach creative writing, and many of my female students have grown-up reading YA by the ton-load, and they are generally better at grammar and usage, more capable of critical thinking and representing that critical thought on the page, and better-prepared generally to succeed in school than the males are. The males have mostly only read the books they’ve been assigned in school.
Here’s the thing, though. If I hand the males a funny short story, they absolutely light up. Eighteen-year-old males can love reading. They do when the material makes sense to them.
I don’t believe boys hit puberty and become biologically/chemically incapable of reading. I don’t think we have the books.
So, writing books for boys is my mission now, largely because I would’ve been an even bigger, lonelier, weenier mess as a teen without books. They made me human. I’d like other writers I know to give it a serious try, write about teenage boys and their foibles without idealized haircuts or reliance on stereotypes (remember, most teens feel like outsiders). I’d like high school teachers and librarians to hand good YA titles to boys (as surely many do) instead of pushing them up to adult titles where they can lose momentum (they have the rest of their lives to read adult stuff if they like to read). And, parents, you should look for good boy titles and get them for your kids.
No, the publishers will not pay for the revolution, because they can fill their lists with books for girls they know will sell. It’s up to us to make the market.
If all goes well, eventually, a break-out title will come around. Because we parents and teachers and librarians have supported boy books, there will be plenty more great titles available for the our post-pubescent teens to read (critical mass). And, like Harry Potter did for MGs and Twilight did for YA girls, the whole market will catch fire and our boys will be as smart and ready for life as they should be!
That’s my hope. I’ll think some more about it.
