Boy books and girl books?

November 17, 2009

Why is it that whenever anyone publishes a list of the best books for boys, it inevitably includes half of the books that made me fall in love with reading as a kid? And no, I wasn’t a tomboy and I’m not talking straight up sports books by writers like Matt Christopher, or even wilderness-y survival-y books like Hatchet (which I did love, but whatever.)

I’m talking about books like the ones on this list: The Phantom Tollbooth, The Red Badge of Courage, John Bellairs’ fantastic, Gorey-illustrated chillers, Watership Down, The Chronicles of Narnia, James and the Giant Peach, The Indian in the Cupboard, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, A Wrinkle in Time, or King Arthur and His Knights.

Why are these “books for boys?” I realize the Art of Manliness folks aren’t saying girls can’t read these books, or anything like that–but I’ve seen lots of lists like this and there seems to be one factor that ties all the so-called best books for boys together: adventure. Why is adventure still seen as the province of  boys and men? Despite the fact that the central adventurer in some of the books mentioned about is a girl? Why are we still viewing men in modern  society as wanderers, while women are seen as tied to the home, the hearth, the known?
It drives me mad. I know the people who make these list are just trying to get boys to read books, and that’s fine. But, if nothing else, the huge sales of the Harry Potter books and the Twilight series to girls and women, not to mention the vast success of the Lord of the Rings movies across both genders,  show that everybody likes adventure. Excitement and exploration of the fantastic and strange is where it’s at. Duh.

So if we’re going to keep on splitting our reading into “his” and “hers,” can we at least own that the adventure genre belongs to both sexes? We may be worried about boys reading, but if we keep recommending stuff like Black Beauty and Little Women (two books that made me want to retch and both of which I never finished) to our girls, they might just stop reading, too.