Boys don’t read books written by women, said Joanne Rowling’s publisher, and they didn’t want her first name on the book, hence the “J.K.” by which we all know her. It’s good for her that she pictured Harry as a boy, because surely the publisher would have felt even more strongly about a female protagonist. Boys, so the stereotype goes, don’t read stories about girls.
This has been a perpetual problem for “girl’s literature.” As an example, let’s take Anne of Green Gables.
This enormously popular series of books went on to inspire a terrific Canadian mini-series in 1985. As one student put it, Anne is “most plausibly aimed at a female audience,” and although I don’t have data, it’s reasonable to guess that most of Anne’s readers and viewers are female.
For the TV series, however, its Avonlea spinoff was probably designed to appeal across genders – although the main character was ostensibly Sara Stanley, an orphaned rich girl sent to live with her family on Prince Edward Island, the character who really captured our hearts and imaginations was Gus Pike, introduced in the second season, the earnest, poor, musically gifted son of a rascally pirate.
A Facebook post today by author Mary E. Lowd reminded me of a wonderfully illuminating study I read back in grad school. (I read so many cool things in grad school!) In this study by psychologist and novelist Keith Oatley, high school students read a story and were asked to mark an E in the margins whenever they experienced an emotion. Using the frequency of these emotional experiences as an indicator of involvement, Oatley found that girls were more “involved” in the story than boys and equally involved with male and female characters, whereas boys were emotionally responsive only to the male characters.
One interpretation would be that girls are more empathetic, but I don’t think that’s it. I think Continue reading
Way back in the day, my Grandpa Ben was a big fan of 
