Gender Preferences and Book Selection

It has often been said that gender makes a huge difference in book preference. This week, I read "Books & Boys: Gender Preferences and Book Selection" by Deborah Langerman to see just how true the statement is.

Langerman's article in the March 1990 edition of School Library Journal is in response to an article that had been in SLJ the previous year. In the prior article, "Boys and the Five Year Void," Ray Nicolle makes many statements about boys and reading that Langerman finds to be completely unfounded and unsubstantiated. Some of the claims Nicolle makes are that boys aren't reading because there are no books for boys ages 7-12, mothers pick out books for their sons, librarians are either women or gay and control funding for libraries, and insinuates that the books girls read are sickeningly sweet and stupid. Seeing as how the article was written in 1989, I don't have too much memory of that era in the history of children's literature, but Langerman has plenty to say. While she says that much of Nicolle's article was pure opinion, she uses the results of many different studies to make her points.

The only statement Nicolle makes in his article that Langerman finds to be true is that boys and girls have different preferences when it comes to books. According to several studies, girls prefer books where the main character is a girl and vice-versa. Girls also prefer family stories, romance, storybooks, and historical fiction while boys read more books about animals, science, comics, science fiction, etc. Langerman also noted how their reading preferences changed over time. While the boys interests remained about the same, the girls interests changed a bit as they got older.

Another interesting topic Langerman brings up is the gender gap. Around age eight, boys and girls begin to quit associating with each other to associate and identify with others of their own gender. She says that in accordance with this theory, around this time boys begin choosing informational books while girls choose fictional, relational books. However, many feminists and behaviorists feel that this rather the work of society's expectations and found that boys were more flexible in their book selection than girls. While many girls would not read non-fiction or other "boys books," many boys were happy to select fiction in addition to their informational, non-fiction books. While it is obvious that boys and girls have different preferences, no one is sure exactly why and if these preferences change as they age.

One of the statements Nicolle makes in his article is that there are no books for boys ages 7-12. Langerman disagrees with this idea by saying that most books feature males as the main character. In fact, between 1950 and 1990, 65% of Caldecott Medal and Honor books had male main characters while only 35% had female main characters. She did say that according to one study, perhaps the reason it was hard to find books for boys this age is because many of the coming-of-age stories about boys were put on adult lists while these same stories about girls were put on juvenile lists. Langerman also points out that much non-fiction is geared towards boys. She says that science books written in the 1960s were very much aimed at boys to prepare them for science careers. (I wonder if this is why girls now are still less interested in science than boys?)

Citing an article by Frances E. Kazemek, Langerman says that perhaps Nicolle was too worried about adding more books with a "male morality" that include moral imperatives, judgements, rules, rights, and hierarchies of values rather than blending these thoughts with a "female morality" of moral concern for others as well as responsibility to form a "new morality." Because of the "new morality," it may have seemed to Nicolle that there weren't enough "boys books" out there. Langerman does note that around this same time, Booklist printed a list called "Popular Reading: Mostly Male" that listed 54 books for boys in the very age range Nicolle claimed that there were no books for. She concludes by saying that we must be very careful when selecting materials, to make sure that there are books to read each and every audience.


Langerman, Deborah. "Books & Boys: Gender Preferences and Book Selection." School Library Journal Mar. 1990: 132-36.

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