Girls in Boys' Roles.

Well, I just finished Alphabet of Dreams, which was quite good, but my mom (a high school librarian) and I got to talking.

Do we really need another story about a girl disguising herself as a boy? We figure once you've read Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy and maybe Daughter of Venice, you've pretty much got a handle on it.

What's really missing is books with main characters who are not disguised boys, but actual boys.

I've read every book that's come into Mom's library this summer - upwards of a hundred. The only ones I can think of with boy narrators have been I am the Messenger, Gabriel's Horses and Odd Man Out. And of those, the only one I really enjoyed was The Messenger.

Now, I think this is a problem, because while a girl will read a novel regardless of the main character's gender, a high school boy is not going to want to read a story about a girl. Particularly a girl dressing up like a boy and saying, again, "Not that I had much there anyway," or having to hide that she has her period.

I mean, yes, it is affirming for a girl to read about another girl in history making something for herself despite established gender roles.

But what about the boys?

I think boys just don't read YA books as much... Boys would be more inclined to read adult sci-fi or fantasy by the time they are teenagers. (This is judging from the limited perspective of me versus my brother and our reading habits anyways.) I must say the girl-disguised-as-boy plot is among my favourites :) Hmm, the whole YA section is sort of strange when considered for too long, I know it exists and there are certainly lots of books in it I read, but teenagers that are readers don't hesitate to pick up adult books, so YA seems more like another genre of reading than a category high school boys (or girls) are specifically reading within.

Interesting conversation...
I am an assistant in a high school library. I mediate the 2 book clubs here and many times find ourselves picking too many books with male narrators...I am the Messenger, Godless, I am the Cheese, Are We there Yet?, American Born Chinese, Looking for Alaska, So Yesterday, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Feed, First Part Last, Stuck in Neutral, one that we haven't done yet (but I hope to this year or next)--An Abundance of Katherines...because we are trying to get more guys involved. I disagree that these books are out there, you just might have look for them--maybe. But I do agree that boys tend to judge books by their narrator and don't read it if it seems too "girlie".

One book I have noticed boys have been reading that is narrated by a girl--Twilight, mostly at our school anyways because a girl recommended it to him.

I agree with Kira--boys tend to read adult sci-fi or fantasy, not YA. And there are plenty of sci-fi/fantasy books out there, so it's not like the boys have any shortage of books to read.

So I don't think this is a problem at all. If girls are willing to read all books, while boys will only read books with male protagonists, whose fault is that? I don't think it follows at all that authors should write fewer books about girls. And like Kira, the girl-disguised-as-a-boy plot device is one of my favourites (Alanna: The First Adventure is another good example of that).

Peeps is another great boy narrated YA novel.

One of the best complements I've received was from a teen boy (nephew of a friend) who had flown up for a relative's funeral. It was his birthday but I didn't realize that ahead of time and the only thing I had on hand that I could give him was a copy of my book. He was just here again recently (unfortunately for another funeral) and told me that although he doesn't usually like to read he really loved my book and couldn't put it down. It was totally flattering and nice to hear since the main character is a girl and I really didn't know if he would like the story or not.

Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie has a male narrator. It's a really good book that boys or girls could enjoy and I think Jordan Sonnenblick's other novel centers on a male as well (though I can't think of the title off hand...).

Also, Mike Lupica wrote a couple YA sports novels (Heat, Travel Team)with boys as the main characters - haven't read them but heard they were both very good.

*edited because I just remembered that Holes and Small Steps by Louis Sachar are good YA books that also have boys as their main characters.

Avi is another great YA author who writes equally about boys and girls and I think everything he's written has been appreciated by both genders because of his reputation. These might be geared toward younger audiences, though - was there a particular age range you were interested in?

I can't resist the temptation to plug The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, in which a boy is the main character, and at one point dresses up like a girl. It may not seem "relevant' to today's teenagers, but it's a lot of fun.

Another author of great historical fiction for young readers (10 to 13, I suppose) is Clara Gillow Clark. She has both male ( Willie and the Rattlesnake King )and female protagonists, and one of the girls (Hill Hawk Hattie) spends some time pretending to be a boy.

I have read Travel Team and I recommend it.

I just posted these two series on another thread, but I'll repeat it here.

I really like the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, entertaining and a great way to get kids interesting in mythology.

Also the Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan are great, funny and full of action.

Both series would be great for boys and girls. Both have male narrators.

A good standalone with the male point of view is The Black Tattoo.

Also I want to second that I love the Alanna books everything of Tamora Pierce in the realm of Tortall is awesome. I usually have to restrain myself from reading them more than once a year.

There are a ton of boy-protagonist books within the YA sci-fi/fantasy genre. Ender's Game and the accompanying series, Harry Potter, Eragon, etc. I find there are also a lot of tomboyish girls, like Lyra in His Dark Materials or Tally in Uglies, that I think boys can relate to as well. There are also male supporting characters in those series.

Outside of sci-fi fantasy, though, YA does seem to be dominated by chick lit and the color pink. Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson is a great book for teenage boys, as are The Catcher in the Rye and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Bruce Brooks, Chris Crutcher, Bruce Stone and Peter Dickinsin come immediately to mind w/out looking at our shelves as YA male POV books.
Bruce Stone's "Been Clever Forever" - a roman a clef about growing up in Chapel Hill, NC - all the names have been changed..but if you've gone to school here, you'll recognize virtually everyplace (literally) and everybody (as a type) has long been one of my favorites.
And the NZed writer, Margaret Mahy, has written many books for a wide range of audiences..some of her very best have teenage male protagonists. And then the VERY little known, Terry Davis, whose coming of age/music/etc. novel "If Rock and Roll were a Machine" is good too.

I read a series of books when I was younger called The Young Astronauts by Rick North that had a mix of both strong male and female characters and it would switch who was telling the story. I enjoyed them. Then later on I gave them to a boy that I babysat for and he loved them...couldn't put them down. Which was amazing because he didn't like to read much (he had a reading disability).

I also agree that there tend to be more boy protagonists in YA sci-fi/fantasy books. I used to read a lot of that genre growing up (still do) and the young boy coming of age to fulfill a great destiny is a commong theme....growing up I often recall wishing for more books in the fantasy genre that had girl protagonists.

Barry Lyga's The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Gothgirl (although for a slightly older audience), and 24 Girls in 7 Days (although the cover is a bit girly) both have male narrators. Ben Mikaelsen (Touching Spirit Bear) is another author whose main characters tend to alternate evenly between male and female.

It's been my experience that boys are more apt to gravitate toward sci-fi, westerns or anything sports-related because if their friends are going to catch them reading something that hasn't been assigned as homework, it had better at least have a semi-cool cover, gory or "masculine" subject matter, or be otherwise explainable in a way that won't cause the reader to lose face. Some books are just easier to sell than others -- and anything with a "girly" or pastel cover is probably not going to fly off the shelves in the hands of teenage boys.

**editing note -- don't know why, but when I posted this over the weekend, none of the touchstones activated. So I deleted and reentered one just now, and up all of them popped. If only all fixes were so easy!

Just to throw in some that I could think of:

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson
A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck
The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

I'm going to agree with Kira and _Zoe_. The "girl disguised as boy" plotline is indeed one of my favorites. And just because people think there aren't enough books for boys out there (with which I have to disagree) - why would that mean there should be less books about girls disguised as boys?

Surely the one has nothing to do with the other. People aren't deciding not to write a book for actual boys because they could write a book about girls disguised as boys. Authors write what they want to write and publishers publish what sells. That doesn't mean that these books are pushing other types ("books for boys") out of the market. There are still plenty of sci-fi, adventure, western, boy having problems young adult books out there.

Gordon Korman is another YA author who writes stories with male protagonists. Son of the Mob is one of my favorites.

Robert Cormier actually has some good books that switch between a male and female point of view. Tenderness and We All Fall Down are good examples. Tenderness is about a young male serial killer and a 15-year old runaway girl who he meets. We All Fall Down switches between the perspectives of a teenage girl, the young men involved in vandalizing her family's house, and the mysterious individual who spies on all of them.

Both of these would be appeal to both teen boys and girls.

Jane Yolen and Bruce Coville (I think) collaborated on a great YA novel entitled Armaggedon Summer. Alternating chapters are narrated by a girl and boy who find themselves on a mountain retreat with a cult that both of their parents belong to - waiting for the end of the world. Heck of a time to fall in love.

Double posted. Sorry.