Books whose main character is a boy: 22

Books whose main character is a girl: 43

Books with both a boy and a girl as main characters: 6 Isle of Swords by Thomas Wayne Batson, The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies, If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period by Gennifer Choldenko, Ms. Zephyr’s Notebook by K.C. Dyer, Regarding the Bees by Kate Klise.

Unclassified: 3 The Cat on the Mat Is Flat, Annie: The Mysterious Morgan Horse, Cork and Fuzz.

One interesting thing is that several of the books attempt middle school romance, usually disastrous, while others go for BFF relationships between a fifth or sixth grade boy and a girl. No Talking by Andrew Clements is more realistic about this age group, I think, as the boys and the girls compete in a no talking contest, and Clements still portrays the underlying interest in the opposite sex without pretending that boys and girls as best buddies is typical in elementary school. Even in seventh or eighth grade, the girls are much more interested than the guys usually are.

In an earlier post, I listed all the Cybils nominees in which there was what I called “an ambiguously platonic friendship” between a middle school aged boy and girl: The Social Experiments of Dorie Dilts: Dumped by Popular Demand by P.G. Kain, The Queen of 33rd Street and the Broken Bike Boy by Sharon Flake, Perch, Mrs. Sackets, and Crow’s Nest by Karen Pavlicin, The Wild Girls by Pat Murphy, Reaching for Sun by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer, Ms. Zephyr’s Notebook by K.C. Dyer, Leap of Faith by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate, Lucy Rose: Working Myself to Bits and Pieces by Katy Kelley, Qwikpick Adventure Society by Sam Riddleburger, The Middle of Somewhere by J.B. Cheaney, Way Down Deep by Ruth White, A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban, Celeste’s Harlem Renaissance by Eleanora Tate, Isle of Swords by Wayne Thomas Batson.

Of course, some of the friendships were more ambiguous than others. In some of the books with seventh and eighth grade protagonists, it was obvious that the boy and the girl were more than “just friends” or wanted to be more than just friends. In books with younger characters, the girl and the boy were often portrayed as simply friends with no complications stemming from gender or romance. Two of the more realistic situations were:

The Middle of Somewhere in which twelve year old Ronnie meets thirteen (?) year old Howard, the two become friends and work together to find Ronnie’s lost little brother. It’s obvious in the book that Ronnie and Howard are interested in one another romantically, but taking it slow as behooves young teenagers.

Lucy Rose: Working Myself to Bits and Pieces by Katy Kelley, in which Lucy Rose is teased unmercifully by the class bully about her friendship with Melonhead and a central element in the book is Lucy Rose’s attempt to keep her friendship with Melonhead intact while avoiding the stigma of “being in love”.

And in all of this “gender gap” stuff, it’s the boys who lose out. More books are written for girls, fewer for boys. The ratio is 22:43, girls win. And I think it gets worse as we move into young adult fiction. See this post at Chasing Ray for a much more articulate discussion of this phenomenon.

What I’m trying to say, poorly but trying, is that just sticking a guy in the book as the girl protagonist’s “best friend” or “latent romantic interest” won’t work to make boys want to read the books. Karate Kid, my ten year old boy, reads books with both male and female main characters, but the books have to have something else, usually action and lots of it, to hold his interest. He’s not much interested in fictional romance, and I really doubt he will be anytime soon, maybe never. Brown Bear Daughter, age 13, reads mostly books about girls, but one of her favorites from the Cybils list was The Mysterious Benedict Society, a book with a group of children at the center, two boys and two girls. She likes mystery, spies, and a touch of romance.

Girls and boys both read Harry Potter and love it. So, what does it take to get the typical middle grade or high school boy interested in reading a book? And whatever it takes, should publishers and authors be producing more of it?