Emily Bazelon Just Had Another Boy. The conventional educational wisdom holds that boys don’t like to read about girls. If a book has a girl on the cover, it’s toast, no matter how adventure-filled or well written. And this isn’t a phenomenon of puberty.
To her relief, she found that most advocates of boy reading aren’t so narrow-minded. They are not trying to direct boys toward a list of masculine titles;in fact, they’re refreshingly skeptical about assigned reading in the first place. Instead, their aim is to enliven the standard fare for both genders. What they have discovered is that many boys like so-called “girl” books, but for different reasons than girls do.
Confession
I confess. I love YA “chick-lit.” Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging was great! Confessions of a Boyfriend Stealer,/i> was wonderful! Westerfield’s Uglies masterfully blended with sci-fi while Tamora Pierce’s series do the same with classical fantasy.
Oh, and I also love hardcore military sci-fi like Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers and Ringo’s Posleen War series. No accounting for taste =)