Don't take this the wrong way, but how old are you? I mean, I don't get this philosophy at all, and I'm 49. Books should be created for those boys who aren't ready for adult action? Who are those boys? I abandoned the Hardy Boys when I discovered Jules Verne at the age of about nine. My parents never tried to keep adult books out of my hands (and they couldn't have, if they tried). I think boys who are willing to read are boys who are bright enough to take on anything. We don't need to give them training wheels and stepping stones to adult literature. They don't want to be treated as idiots who need the help. Boys want something challenging, and if you challenge them, they'll respond.
I think (I may be wrong) that the argument isn't that the boys actually _need_ the training wheels, but that their parents may discourage them from reading adult books. I'm also in my forties, and when I was a kid, I read whatever I darn well pleased. But this is an era of (IMO) tremendous overprotection of children, and I wouldn't be surprised if that overprotection included forbidding children to read what isn't marked as being for their age group. ChickenFreak
To the OP: there are good YA books out there with male protagonists, but they are much fewer than ones with females, I agree. Here are some I've read in the last few years with guys leading the story that I'd recommend: Anything by John Green, but his best one is Looking for Alaska. Tomorrow When the World Began (fantastic series) Tangerine (really well written, great story, suspenseful) by Bloor Ender's Game by Card
Okay, obviously you don't understand what the whole Young Adult category is about and why. YA is NOT about training wheels or stepping stones. It's simply books that have characters that age can relate to and have a fast past and answers certain thematic questions that only tend to appear in people of that age, like: * Acquiring more mature social skills. * Achieving a masculine or feminine sex role. * Accepting the changes in one's body, using the body effectively, and accepting one's physique. * Achieving emotional independence from parents and other adults. * Preparing for sex, marriage, and parenthood. * Selecting and preparing for an occupation. * Developing a personal ideology and ethical standards. * Assuming membership in the larger community. Those themes can be explored in any genre within YA. When they are presented with a MC the intended audiences own age and with a fast pace plot, what you have is a YA novel. It has NOTHING to do with reading level or content or anything else. Just as there exist African American fiction and yet people know GOOD AND WELL that black folks will and do read everything, there exist YA while there is the understanding that young people can and will read anything. African American fiction is simply there for a certain market that provides them with characters and themes they can relate to, same as YA. Everyone understands that kids will read adult novels (like I said, I started on Lovecraft when I was fourteen or fifteen years old) and adults will read YA novels as well ("The Giver" is still one of my favorite books)
Ok, lets just assume, as I said before, that that is correct and women read more than men. Ok, well boys play more sports than girls, does that mean it would be perfectly okay to end all girl's athletic programs and for companies like ADIDAS and NIKE to not market any products to girls? Because after all, women in sports was never the multi-billion dollar industry that men in sports is. Oh, but that's racism you say? The only reason more women aren't in sports is because of society's expectations you say? There are still enough girls interested in sports to warrant them having products marketed to them and for them to have their own sports programs and schools and everything else, you say? well, I say that even if (a big "if") boys on average read less than girls, there are clearly enough of them reading that there should be new fiction made with them in mind. That's what I'm saying. If there is enough of a market for females in sports that NIKE manufactures and markets girl's basketball shoes, than I think there's enough of a market for boys who read for publishing houses to publish and market fiction for boys.
It's about the phases of existentialism. Superficial attachment, angst, nihilism and eventually reaching the freed state of being. Darn, it's almost Buddhist in some screwed up way. Off topic, just hoping to help
Actually there's only one study there, the Gallup poll, and I have to say; have you read it? Specifically this; So looking at the relevant number I can tell that there was a between five and eleven point variations in male to female reported reading habits in 2005 in the U.S. with 95% confidence. Unless of course; Five points is not an appreciable margin in a study of this kind, eleven points is also not a significant trend. [Keep in mind, with the problems with YA and the books the boys are exposed to a miner loss in readership is inevitable, and also totally irrelevant] Also this focuses on the U.S. and on 2005 both fatal flaws from the perspective of what you want to do with this. It cannot be used to show a worldwide current trend. Finally I wish to point out that the position you endorsed was 'men inherently read less' a position these numbers offer no support for, [due to the laws of cause and effect] and further a position NO numbers of this kind could offer support for. A position that has I think more to do with your biases than any numbers or facts.
Someone mentioned marketing, and I must concur. Young Adult intends to explore themes adolescents are exploring, and I hate to be blatantly obvious about it, but when I was a teenager I had only one thing in mind worth exploring--other than "deep" space. So it does not surprise me at all how overly romanticized and sexualized YA has become. It sells. Plain and simple. I read Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov, and Nietzsche as a teenager--which sounds odd coming out of my mouth because I'm not even thirty yet. In the '90s when I wanted my gothic, sexy, monstrously bloody, BDSM vampire itch tickled... there was Vampire: the Masquerade. I don't take offense to the overly feminized YA these days, its simply a sign of our times, and anyone who thinks male culture isn't a factor is ignoring the forest for the trees. In the SciFi section there are hundreds of titles I know as a boy I'd have LOVED to read, and I'm sure many boys read now. The success of video/RPG game books pretty much says it all: HALO, Starcraft, Warhammer: 40k, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, and let's not forget Star Wars. I bought the hardcover Starcraft II novelization, because I've been playing Starcraft since I was... a teenage boy.
