Why Don't Boys Read More?

Are there “Girl Books and Boy Books?” as I asked when I wrote here on 4/22/10 about how some of my female and male students responded differently to a novel they read for my class? As I said then, the topic of whether and why females and males, on average, have overlapping but different tastes in books is too large and too fraught to summarize here. But I wondered about the gender question and books again recently when I read Robert Lipsyte’s essay, “The Lost Boys,” in the 8/21/11 New York Times Book Review. Lipsyte states that “boys’ aversion to reading, let alone to novels, has been worsening for years.” He discusses several possible reasons, but posits that one of the main ones is that most Y.A. (Young Adult) fiction is aimed toward girls. “At least three-quarters of the target audience [is] girls, and they [want] to read about mean girls, gossip girls, frenemies and vampires.” He goes on to say about current Y.A. titles that “books with story lines about disease, divorce, death and dysfunction [sell] better for girls than…for boys.” Whatever the reasons, it is unfortunate that boys read less than girls, and if publishing more high quality Y.A. titles that appeal to boys is the answer, or part of the answer, I hope that publishers will respond to Lipsyte’s essay by trying to do this.