{"id":8977,"date":"2006-03-13T10:26:11","date_gmt":"2006-03-13T17:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2006\/03\/13\/why-boys-like-some-girls-books.html"},"modified":"2006-03-13T10:26:11","modified_gmt":"2006-03-13T17:26:11","slug":"why_boys_like_s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/03\/13\/why_boys_like_s.html","title":{"rendered":"Why boys like some<\/em> girls books"},"content":{"rendered":"

I loved the Little House<\/em> books growing up, despite the received wisdom that Boys Hate Girl Books, and that books with pictures of girls on the cover are (for little boys, at least) deadly when it comes to sales. But the received wisdom is often wrong<\/a>; some girl books do well for boys but for different reasons than they do for girls.<\/p>\n

Ever since Nancy Drew outperformed the Hardy Boys in the 1930s, it’s been clear that boys will read some stories about girls. Publishers have marketed titles to take advantage of this fact. The Amazon entry for Little House in the Big Woods<\/em>, for example, urges boys to “take another peek at their sisters’ shelves.” This Little House book, it promises, “is full of the thrills, chills, and spills typically associated with ‘boy’ books.” The real appeal of Little House <\/em>for many boys probably isn’t the narrative, but rather the precise and detailed descriptions of how to tap a maple tree for syrup or load a musket. Betsy-Tacy <\/em>and All-of-a-Kind Family<\/em>, too, are full of information about their worlds. According to Eden Ross Lipson, the author of The New York Times Parent’s Guide to the Best Books for Children<\/em>, boys read on a need-to-know basis: To generalize wildly, “They don’t set out looking for story and relationship. They set out looking for information.”<\/p>\n

Why then do a lot of boys get turned off from reading sometime in elementary or middle school? The blame partly lies with librarians. They are mostly women, they tend to love stories, and they also have a thing for books that teach moral lessons. (Take a look at this list<\/a> of the winners of the Newbery Medal for children’s literature awarded by the American Library Association.) Librarians also play a hugely important role in children’s book publishing. “You don’t get a walloping success without that institutional support,” says Lipson, who is the former editor of the children’s section of the New York Times Book Review. Authors like Jon Scieszka (The True Story of the Three Little Pigs!, The Stinky Cheese Man<\/em>) and Gary Paulsen (Hatchet<\/em>, the Tucket <\/em>adventures) have hit home runs with books whose humor or historical element appeal especially to boys. But they’re the exceptions. Librarians and teachers often look down on boy humor or nonfiction, and their disdain seeps through to the boys who crave those things. “What we’re doing now is pushing one thing: fine literature,” says Scieszka, a former teacher. “For some kids, that doesn’t do it.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Exactly. If Johnny doesn’t read, maybe that’s because there aren’t books out there that appeal to him. Except for tales of Pa Ingalls loading his rifle …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I loved the Little House books growing up, despite the received wisdom that Boys Hate Girl Books, and that books with pictures of girls on the cover are (for little…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36,23,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-books","category-parenting","category-school-daze"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":27382,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/04\/14\/boys-books-and-girls-books.html","url_meta":{"origin":8977,"position":0},"title":"Boys books and girls books","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 14-Apr-12 2:57am","format":false,"excerpt":"Katherine, fortunately, has never seemed constrained by the gender of the protagonist. She just loves to read.For myself growing up, for ever \"boy's\" SF tale, there was a Laura Wilder prairie tale. I was much more interested in the content than in whether the book was led by a hero\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":127497,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/12\/boys-will-be-boys-and-girls-girls-and-their-toys-um-well.html","url_meta":{"origin":8977,"position":1},"title":"Boys will be boys (and girls girls (and their toys … um, well …)","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 12-Aug-15 2:11am","format":false,"excerpt":"Are more girls than boys going to choose Barbies? Yeah, probably.Are more boys than girls going to choose toy guns (do they still sell toy guns?)? Probably so.So, then, why the concern if they aren't explicitly labeled as \"boy toys\" vs \"girl toys\"?And if a girl wants some Marvel action\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13565,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/11\/12\/school_days_at_camp.html","url_meta":{"origin":8977,"position":2},"title":"School Days at Camp","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 12-Nov-08 7:41pm","format":false,"excerpt":"An amazing high school yearbook, the 1944 \"Aquila\", for Tri-State High School, Tule Lake ... a Japanese Internment Camp in WWII. An amazing testimonial to normalcy amongst abnormal (and unjust)...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":45608,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/01\/really-dc-really.html","url_meta":{"origin":8977,"position":3},"title":"Really, DC? Really?","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 1-Oct-14 6:04am","format":false,"excerpt":"The \"Training to be Batman's Wife\" is kind of goofy and maybe a bit subtle in its unpleasant message. The Onesies in the linked article (boys: \"Future Man of Steel\"; girls: \"I Only Date Heroes\") is pretty awful.But the Superman \"Score\" shirt? Really? Not only is it an awful edit\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27354,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/04\/11\/its-fun-for-boys-and-girls-alike-except-when-the-girls-cant-play.html","url_meta":{"origin":8977,"position":4},"title":"It's fun for boys and girls alike! Except when the girls can't play.","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 11-Apr-12 11:37am","format":false,"excerpt":"It's fun for boys and girls alike! Except when the girls can't play.Saudi (along with Brunei and Qatar) says it will not be sending any official Saudi female athletes to the Olympics, though it seems to leave open the possibility of allowing the IOC to invite some unofficial ones themselves.Screw\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128502,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/04\/men-women-boys-girls-killing-nurturing-just-like-god-intended.html","url_meta":{"origin":8977,"position":5},"title":"Men! Women! Boys! Girls! Killing! Nurturing! Just like God intended!","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 4-Nov-15 12:39am","format":false,"excerpt":"Sorry, Dennis, a lot of points in your article -- which seems to boil down to \"gender-neutral toys spell the end of civilization\" -- just don't hold water. Or testosterone.1. It would be nice if you actually linked to the NYT article in question, rather than just asserting what it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}