An article in Daily Life, ‘How I’ve helped teach boys that girls are boring and unimportant’, by Kasey Edwards really made me think.
She quotes L.J. Lacey of the Melbourne children’s bookstore, Three Four Knock On The Door, saying that 90 per cent of the books she sells have a male protagonist, and customers almost never buy books for boys with a female main character. In contrast, she says, people buy books for girls with male protagonists all the time.
Edwards argues that when boys only read stories about boys or men, they’re given the implicit message that stories focusing on people who are different and whose experiences are different from their own are not worth bothering about.
She confesses that in the past when looking for a book for a boy she is as guilty as other adults of only buying books with male protagonists. It has never even occurred to her to buy a boy a book about a girl. She plans to change her habits because she believes it matters a lot in many important ways. You can read her article here.
I too must confess I tend to choose books for boys with male heroes. Two of my books have girls as main characters – The Girl in the Picture and The Girl in the App. I have never thought of giving these books to a boy to read or imagined them being bought for a boy.
Recently I sent a few of my books including these to a friend for her children, a girl aged 10 and a boy aged 11. I imagined she’d give these two books to her daughter, but a message came back that she was reading them with her son. Some good parenting going on there!
What are your book buying habits in relation to girls and boys? Any thoughts?
Footnote: I didn’t get any comments back about how you interpreted the cover of The Lost Thing so I’ve added a few things that I noticed.
The printed title. Letters of uneven sizes and in a mixture of upper and lower case with the almost childish printing of the author’s name give the title a friendly, unconventional feeling. The word Lost stands out a bit because of its rich deep reddish colour. This suggests lostness is likely to be the focus of the story.
The main framed picture. This is a picture of a fairly ordered, yet empty type of city made of a lot of unappealing concrete. Is there an echo of the Jeffrey Smart picture of The Cahill Expressway in this?
There are hints in some of the buildings on the left that the city operates like clockwork. The statue could imply the city sees itself as rather important. There could be an echo of the Statue of Liberty in the outstretched arm? Is that undercut by the figure of the statue holding what looks like a briefcase and having a box like head?
The large red out of place object that has tentacles for legs is intriguing. It seems to be moving and alive or at least in working order. Are those surfboard like things wings for it to fly? Its incongruity with the rest of the scene makes you wonder about the part this thing will play in the story.
The only human figure is bent and odd looking – a bit like a distorted version of an office worker from one of John Brack’s famous cityscapes. Yet he hasn’t been quite swallowed up by conformity as Brack’s office workers have. This figure is still curious. He is drawn to look at and think about the strange misplaced thing he sees in front of him. A sign of hope perhaps?
The framing of the image and title. Marks around the main image are very ordered though faint. There are numbers, mechanical diagrams, rectangular blocks of colour, words and sentences of different lengths and in various fonts, all given varying degrees of importance. A message given some prominence (‘A tale for those who have more important things to pay attention to’) tells of an author whose humour is gentle and who is at home with irony. A large mark next to Shaun Tan’s name looks like a postmark. It makes me feel the book is on its way to me, a message from the author. I want to open the book to see how the story unfolds.
My son mostly reads books with male protagonists and I’m just happy he is such an avid reader, better that than no reading right? However, It has on occasion occurred to me that he reads very little with female leads. The only books I can think of that he has read are Playing Beatie Bow, The Hunger Games Series and (right at this moment) Divergent. Of course all of these books have an element of fantasy about them. Interestingly my girls also prefer to read books with girls as the main character. I have to say that there are definitely not as many QUALITY modern books with female leads, you really have to go out of your way to find them.
Your comments made me think about what causes children to be avid readers. Shall discuss this in another post, perhaps.
Maybe it gets harder to find good books with female leads for older age groups. There seem to be plenty of picture books with girls as the main character. I must admit when choosing books to read to my Kindy class I don’t necessarily think about whether the main character is male or female.
I am converted – now looking for books with girl protagonists/female main characters for grandsons!!! Starting early may change some views – Margie
Let us know if you come across any good choices, Margie.
Great topic for thought! My son(13)is generally reading books with a male protagonist but he has also read books with a female main character and/or a mixture of both. It would be interesting to know the authors’ perceived audience when they devised their characters and who they generally envisage will be reading the book, or whether this is even on their radar at all. I think it is healthy to have a mixture……for the reader to get a different perspective on things…..which is, essentially, what reading does for all of us. I have a question for you as a published author Donna – once it reaches the publishing stage, is a book then pitched to a particular age/gender/demographic etc for effective marketing? Does this affect the cover design/look/feel?
That’s a big question, Vanessa, because different publishers do things differently. But on the whole I’d say the market is factored in from the very beginning. This affects work on the book at every stage. Sometimes books are re-badged with different covers when the market turns out to be different from what was envisaged.
My own experiences with traditional publishers have been varied. Sometimes they know exactly what they are doing from the moment the ms is accepted; at others it has been more of an evolving process. With self publishing it depends on how savvy you are. I don’t give thought to the market (my marketing skills are zero minus) though I know I should. There are so many other factors that loom such as what format can I print the book in that won’t cost more than it can be sold for; how can I find the right illustrator and afford to pay them fairly and so on.
Oh I really wanted to do the last “assignment” about the book cover! I forgot.
I have made a very conscious effort to buy/read books with girls as protagonists for Gabriel. He likes them just as well as the ones with male protagonists. I think it’s not so much a question of gender for him as whether the book explores a topic or world that he’s interested in. So then my challenge becomes to find books with girl protagonists that have pirates, Lego, Knights, police or dinosaurs in them. We’ve just picked up “Zog” by Julia Donaldson which has a princess who doesn’t want to flounce around the kingdom in frilly dresses, but instead wants to be a doctor. The knight asks her to “train him up”. He thinks that’s cool.
Yes – it really can be a challenge. I didn’t know about Zog – thanks Cathy. I’ll try it out with my Kindies. The Gruffallo by Julia Donaldson is a great favourite of theirs but I hadn’t realised how many others she’s written.
I should clarify that she’s not actually the protagonist…that’s a male dragon – the “Zog” of the title. But she and the prince are the only human characters, so I’m kind of counting that as its kind of a dual storyline…. Could make a really cool children’s play, I think.
Interesting thought about the play, Cath.
Just had to comment again because we read “The Terrible suitcase” by Emma Allen. Female protagonist in book about friendship/jealousy/first day at kindy and has space theme included. Win!