The Tiger's Bookshelf: Harriet Potter?
When a man recently went to a bookstore in search of his book group’s latest selection, he never dreamed that a clerk would question who the book was for, nor did he expect an unsolicited analysis of his character. Yet that’s what happened to one purchaser of Aryn Kyle’s novel, The God of Animals, when the woman who waited on him asked who he was buying the book for, and when learning it was for the customer himself, informed him that men who read “women’s fiction” were “sensitive.”
The customer was understandably unsettled by this encounter, which he later discussed on National Public Radio’s program, The Bryant Park Project. As a bookseller for many years, and as a parent of two sons, I’m perplexed and unsettled by this story as well, on a couple of different levels.
Even if we ignore the fact that The God of Animals is an amazing novel about the modern-day American West, in which one of the central relationships is that between a father and daughter, and is a book that should never be limited to readers of only one gender, the assumption that there are “men’s books” and “women’s books” and never the twain shall meet is one that is alien to any bookstore I have ever known. Yet at the same time, as a children’s bookseller, I often heard, and have espoused myself, the point of view that “girls will read books about boys but boys will rarely read books about girls.”
There are of course exceptions–I’ve yet to find any child who will not devour Roald Dahl’s Matilda, and Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass trilogy seems to have met few gender-based barriers. Yet I’ve learned from bitter experience that offering a boy Harriet the Spy or my all-time favorite Mistress Masham’s Repose often will evoke the disappointed response, “Oh, it’s about a girl.”
When my sons were small, they loved the adventures of Dorothy in the land of Oz or of Alice whether she was in Wonderland or through the looking glass as much as they did Peter Pan or Rat, Mole and Toad in The Wind in the Willows. And certainly Marjorie’s Brothers One and Two seem to enjoy books about females as well as males.
So when and how does this divergence in taste occur? Or do we just assume that it will occur and turn it into a self-fulfilling prophesy? In your experience, do boys avoid books in which girls take the leading role? If so, how can we broaden that point of view? And what would have become of J.K Rowling if she had written about Harriet Potter?
April 24th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I would say it’s one of the bonuses of reading to your children – while we do often choose books together, or take it in turns to do so, I do sometimes “inflict” my choice of books onto my boys. They loved “The Secret Garden”, are enjoying our gradual reading of “The Borrowers Omnibus” and were so caught up in the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books that even when I thought it would get too soppy towards the end they wanted to carry on. I am very determined that the book will always come before the film – but recently Anne of Greengables has been one exception, as I thought that might be going too far. However, now they want to have that read to them too. In a sense, I have been reliving my own childhood through these books and not having a daughter to read them to means that the boys get them: and all to the good. If I did have a daughter, would I have stuck to the stereotypes, I wonder? Certainly my boys would have missed out…
April 24th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Interesting question about “sticking to the stereotypes”–I don’t think the gender bias comes from parents, and when I worked in a school library, little boys came in desperate to read the next “Ramona” book by Beverly Cleary. When and where does that division come from? Is it because boys as they grow older want to read about outdoor adventures and sports, which they find almost exclusively in books about other boys?
April 27th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Yes, I wonder… it would be interesting to know if boys have discovered/ are reading books like Girl Overboard by Justina Chen Headley …
April 27th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Are there any parents/teachers/librarians who can field that question? I can only say that my sons didn’t–after they entered the ages of 8+.
January 11th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Is it possible it’s less of an actual discrepancy, and more a case of “growing up”? I’m a nineteen-year-old girl, and I know I went through a phase when I was thirteen where I threw out all my disney films and “children’s” books, including the Roald Dahls. I now deeply regret this (I’m listening to Disney music right now, in fact), and I know if it weren’t for attempting to be “cool”, I’d never have gotten rid of them. Is it that when boys get to a certain age they realise that in order to be a “grown-up”, they need to focus more on traditional “boy things”? Peer pressure can be pretty powerful…
H
August 18th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
What a wonderful point for discussion that is and how I wish it had been taken up! Peer pressure is powerful and so is the wash of testosterone or estrogen that comes in a tsunami wave at the onset of adolescence. And yet at 13 and 14 I still devoured Catcher in the Rye and East of Eden (where the female characters paled when placed beside Caleb and Aaron.)
But my sons weren’t reading similar books about women when they turned that age. Is there more pressure placed upon “Today you have become a man” than there is on girls becoming women?
August 19th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Wow, yes. I’m sorry I didn’t catch your comment when you wrote it, Hazel; and am very glad you found it, Janet – I think peer pressure does have a lot to do with it. I’m glad to say, two years on from when this discussion started, we are still reading a vast array of books together – but Older Brother’s (nearly 12) own reading is veering in the direction of action boy heroes… and now I put my mind to it, I’m trying to think of the last novel he read on his own with a female as the lead protagonist. Hmm. Still lots of picture books but I can’t think of a novel. perhaps book covers also have something to answer for. Maybe, to take the original allusion of this post, we need different book covers for girls and boys, like there are children’s and adult’s covers for Harry Potter!