I'm teaching Robert Westall's
The Machine Gunners at the moment with my Year 8 class. When I started reading the book with the class I was surprised by the reaction that the girls gave the book. Basically, they said that they could never like it because it was a "boy's book", full of guns, adventure and action. When I first started teaching twenty years ago, girls didn't respond like this; there was much less stereotyping about what girls and boys should read then. But if you look now at the books that girls are being directed to read, you see that there's chronic stereotyping going on. Look at
this list issued by Amazon which purports to be a teenage fiction list for girls: the covers are all stereotypically "girly", pink, princessy and "romance-driven". Interestingly, the books that are suggested for boys are a bit less stereotyped if you look
here. However, there is much boys' fiction which clearly aims to play to certain stereotypes about boys. Look at this list
here.
I don't think this sort of packaging does anyone any good: it puts boys off what can be good books, and it makes girls feel they have to read books with these sorts of covers. The girls in my class are now really enjoying
The Machine Gunners but they've had to put aside their prejudices before getting into it.
Comments
I agree, it's a real problem, particularly if you have a girl, like I do, who actively dislikes all the pink nonsense, and a boy, also like mine, not into guns or spies. Either I have weird kids or actually, this is lazy marketing and purchasing. The girl list you direct us to is interesting (it's a list by a private individual, btw, not Amazon itself) as at least it does include a couple of books (Holes, Boy in Striped Pyjamas) that lots of boys have read and loved. And I Capture The Castle is a great read! There are rumblings around about the ubiquity of pink as a marketing identifier for girls, and probably a few pressure groups, but they may well be playing to the gallery. I'm as concerned with the book on that list called 'Diary of a Chav'. I wouldn't want either of my obviously weird kids thinking it's OK to call someone a chav. Can we call on publishers to be more gender neutral? That relies on parents directing, investigating and actively encouraging. And why would they change a formula that obviously works for them? Is the question: is it more important to get boys reading, at any cost, than to stereotype both girls and boys?
This is very interesting Jenny. Do publishers actually have a duty to promote books in a "non-stereotypical" way? I can see them coming back with the answer that they're just responding to the market. It's a big cultural issue which affects boys and girls reading a great deal. Yes, I Capture The Castle is very good and should be read by both boys and girls. A few years ago, I scored some good GCSE results in Lit by teaching Wuthering Heights; some of the boys got A*s -- and WH is generally regarded -- and marketed as -- a "girl's" book.
I don't suppose you have a SOW or any resources for Machine Gunners? It's an oldie, but a goodie!
The campaign against everything "pink" is here:
http://www.pinkstinks.co.uk/
PS Loved The Machine Gunners, didn't finish I Capture The Castle but might give it another go as it's been recommended by two people. An excellent book for children of both sexes aged about 9/10 is The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler. If you don't know the surprise ending, I won't spoil it! Also loved: Stig of The Dump, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, The Silver Sword, Warhorse, Anne of Green Gables, Eagle of the Ninth, Treasure Island...
PS. I once taught "The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler" to a class of 30 girls. They didn't get it! Ho hum.
Perhaps even more worrying are the games, all with a rating of 18, which are increasingly popular with boys in years 7 to 9 ( albeit hearsay and anecdotal evidence of mine), such as grand auto theft. Not only can they "visit" lap dancing clubs, but also "pick up" prostitutes with the option of beating them up afterwards. While these games have an age restriction, it is clearly being flouted. I wonder whether parents are aware of the content of these games, and if they are I worry that they think the content is appropriate. That decent literature competes with this with young boys says a great deal about our society.
Add new comment