Where the boys are -- oh, those elusive young male readers

My mission at the North Texas Teen Book Festival last weekend was to find books my adolescent grandsons would read. From tots who demanded nightly story readings and elementary schoolers who insisted on taking their chapter books to bed with them, they had grown into preteens (now early teenagers) who preferred to spend their spare time watching YouTube and playing video games.

Were they doomed to join the demographic of males who seldom (maybe never!) crack open a book outside of academic required reading? Where were the books aimed at teen boys that I remembered from my own and my daughter’s growing up years? In those days, girls who wanted action and adventure on the page had to read boy books. Now we have an abundance of kick-butt heroines in girls’ books, but have they shoved boy books off the shelves?

With that in mind – and temporarily ignoring that many women have written books for boys – I underlined every discussion that included male authors in my copy of the Teen Book Festival’s program and set out for the Irving Convention Center on a rainy Saturday morning.

image: StockSnap by Pixabay

Top of the list was the “New Kids on the Block” panel, where four out of the five debut writers were guys. I also came prepared with extensive knowledge of my boys’ favorite topics. They’re avid drawers who create their own comic books (and loved meeting personal idol Dav Pilkey) at last year’s festival. The boys had also loved the magical school stories of the Harry Potter and Rick Riordan’s demigods series. Relationships with girls, however, were still iffy – they’d been aghast that one of their male classmates had gone on a (gasp!) date. With a girl.

I crossed anything resembling romances off the festival’s offerings but added its “Getting Schooled,” “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Read Them,” and “Getting Graphic,” all with multiple male authors – to my list of must-sees.

I was a little surprised – but shouldn’t have been – when teacher (and debut author) Alicia D. Williams of the “New Kids on the Block” panel mentioned that even boys enjoyed reading her girl-coming-of-age story Genesis Begins Again. After all, girls have a long history of reading stories written for boys, even stories written by women. It was the Black Stallion series for me, The Outsiders (by female author S.E. Hinton) for my daughter. And of course, for my grandkids’ generation, the Harry Potter books written by Joanne (now better known as J.K.) Rowling. 

Still more surprisingly, Williams and the other debut authors (Ben Guterson, Matt Mendez, Ben Philippe, and Justin A. Reynolds) didn’t recommend specific books. Rather, they said, I should to take my grandsons to a library or bookstore, let them browse the shelves for themselves, and ask librarians and store employees what books kids with their interests actually read. 

Probably not surprisingly, librarians and audience members at the panel had some suggestions for 13-year-old boys: Shannon Messenger’s Keeper of the Lost Cities series, and Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet (“or really, anything by Paulsen”). 

The “Getting Schooled” panel introduced me to the likes of Max Brallier, Jen Calonita, Jerry Craft, Stuart Gibbs, Sarah Mlynowski, and Raina Tegemeier, with plenty of possibilities for readers negotiating the tricky halls of junior high schools. (Brallier, Craft, and Tegemeier, along with Terri Libenson, also appeared on the “Getting Graphic” panel of writers and illustrators of graphic novels.)

And the “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Read Them” panelists – David Bowles, Alexandra Bracken, Adam Gidwitz, Yoon Ha Lee, Lisa McMann, and Christina Soontornvat – made me recall my grandsons’ fascination with the phenomenon of “cryptids” and monsters.

Given that I didn’t hit the festival’s bookstore until after the last panel ended, some of the books I sought had already sold out. Still, my take-home bookbag included A Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe; Winterhouse by Ben Guterson; The Last Kids on Earth by Max Brallier; New Kid by Jerry Craft; The Chupacabras of the Rio Grande by David Bowles and Adam Gidwitz; and Spy School by Stuart Gibbs. I hesitated before adding Justin A. Reynolds’ Opposite of Always (which he described as a rom-com with time travel) to the bag, promising to read it for myself. Or maybe I’ll let the boys see it when they’re old enough not to be appalled by the idea of dating. . . .