Boys In Books!

A  recent comment on this site wondered whether boys would read more if there were more YA books about boys. It’s certainly true that the average YA fantasy or SF novel written in recent years is  seen from the female viewpoint, and that in dystopians, the average trope is “teenage girl saves the world.”

But there is plenty of stuff in which boys play the lead role. I won’t be going into the obvious ones like Harry Potter, because everyone has heard of that series and either read it or, if they are interested, has it on their list to read. I won’t go into the classics here either, though I would like to point out that the vast majority of those were written for the enjoyment of boys.

I’ll just talk about a few book series I have read and enjoyed which are seen from a male viewpoint. Some are written by men, some by women -  no problem either way! They’re all good. 

Let’s start with Aussie author John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice series and the spinoff Brotherband series. Both are set in a mediaeval world mainly centred around European-style countries, though the England-equivalent is named Araluen, the real-world name of a place in New South Wales. The characters do travel outside of the Europe-equivalent. 

The hero of the Ranger’s Apprentice series is Will, an orphan brought up in a castle along with other orphaned children. His dream is to go to Battle School to be trained as a knight, but he is just too small and slim, so he is taken on as an apprentice by Halt, a Ranger. The Ranger Corps are very good at climbing and using bows and fighting in ways that don’t require armour and don’t need the Ranger to be big and hulking. They are required to have brains, though! 

In this world, women have a lot more freedom and work opportunities than in our mediaeval Europe. 

And people drink coffee. 

On the whole, the series is good fun and exciting as well. There is not a lot of magic, despite the fantasy world. That doesn’t mean there is no magic at all...

The spinoff Brotherband series is set in the same universe, with a hero, Hal, who also uses his brains rather than brawn. The setting is a Scandinavia-equivalent. 

I won’t go into the Percy Jackson books, which are pretty much as well known as the Harry Potter books, but I did read and enjoy the first one. Percy is a demigod, son of Poseidon, studying with a bunch of other demigod teens in modern America. A nice idea to get kids interested in Greek mythology.

Garth Nix’s best-known work is the Old Kingdom series, which are centred around heroines rather than heroes, but he did write a middle-grade series with a male protagonist, The Keys To The Kingdom, which are named for the days of the week - Mister Monday, etc. I confess I only got around to reading the first one, but one of my book club lads bludgeoned me into buying the whole series for the library. I was very pleased, during a Melbourne Writers Festival event, to be able to introduce him to the author, as well as a friend of his who had read and loved the Old Kingdom books, despite the girls on the covers. 

Catherine Jinks wrote a series called Evil Genius, set in Sydney, about a boy who finds himself studying to be exactly that. The kids at his special school all have powers, including one whose special power is his stink! 

That brings me to Mark Walden, whose H.I.V.E series is centred around the Higher Institute of Villainous Education. It’s a Hogwarts for future super villains(it also has a henchman program for future minions). The hero, Otto, has a mysterious past, which he finds out about in the course of the series. He is brought there because he showed impressive technical skills that basically brought down a particularly nasty Prime Minister. Another student was an international jewel thief at about thirteen. There is even a sort of Neville Longbottom character who is a genius with plants and nearly wipes out the school with a giant plant monster. There are some strong female characters, but the books are seen from Otto’s viewpoint. 

I have reviewed the first book on this site. The first one is very funny, but they become grimmer as the series goes on. I did get an interview with the author here, and he explains that. 

I probably shouldn’t say too much about the Artemis Fowl books(see my review of one here) which are at least as big as the Percy Jackson ones, and I believe there is a forthcoming film. But they are wonderful! Despite having the name of a Greek goddess, Artemis Fowl is a boy, Irish, and brilliant. He’s part of a wealthy Irish crime family, but his Dad is not much of a baddie and when he is kidnapped, Artemis devises a plan to raise the money to save him by kidnapping a fairy. The fairies are a technologically advanced race who live underground and only come up to our world when they need to. His fairy is a sort of female James Bond. She is not impressed at being grabbed by a human. The first book is middle grade, but like Harry Potter, the series grows up with the readers.

British author Charlie Higson wrote two very enjoyable boy-viewpoint series. Young James Bond is one of them. This is a series of novels in which a teenage James Bond is still at Eton in the 1920s when he starts his adventures, complete with “Bond girls” - actually, brave and intelligent girls who are with him on his adventures. But they are meant to be Bond girls, as the author admitted in an interview on this site. 

The same author did a series called The Enemy, in which everyone over about 14 is turned into a flesh-eating zombie. It’s a disease which turns the victim’s brain to mush and makes them want to bite, and often eat, the kids who are still sane and human. The horror of it is that you might end up dead because you hesitated to kill a family member - they certainly don’t hesitate to kill you! The kids have a deadline to work out why this disease has happened and how to fix it. Meanwhile, they are living all over London, from supermarkets to Buckingham Palace! 

Anthony Horowitz wrote about boy spy Alex Rider. Alex is a boy who is blackmailed into working for MI6 after his spy uncle gets killed, by a threat to deport his beloved American nanny. The first novel, Stormbreaker was filmed. I don’t think it was very successful because it was the only one, but the series is well worth reading. 

Aussie Michael Pryor has written quite a few boy-centred books, but we will talk here about his YA series The Laws Of Magic. It’s a steampunk series set in an alternative universe just before the Great War. The hero, Aubrey Fitzwilliam, is a boy from an upper-crust family. His genius is in magic. In this world, magic is something you can learn at school. It has laws like the laws of physics - you know, the ones ye canna change? So you can teach it, and it’s a part of everyday life in the Empire. But Aubrey is technically dead. Before the book started, he had played around with death magic and now is literally having to keep body and soul together. As if this isn’t bad enough, there is a plot in the higher ranks of the magical bureaucracy to start the war... Fortunately, he has his friends George and Caroline to help him.  

Great fun! Boys and girls alike should enjoy it. I remember one of our female students telling me she had burst out laughing while reading it at home and her mother had come running to see what was wrong. But it was the boys who mostly read it and asked when the next one was coming out.

If you can persuade your middle grade child to read historical  fiction, there are Aussie author Felice Arena’s three novels The  Boy And The Spy, A Great Escape and Fearless Frederic. I mentioned all those in a recent post about treasures I have found at my old home, in connection with late British author Geoffrey Trease. 

Catherine Jinks, whose Evil Genius books I have mentioned above, also wrote historical fiction many years ago. Her hero, Pagan Kidrouk, features in a series starting in Third Crusade era Jerusalem, with Pagan’s Crusade and going on to the Cathars in France.  A wonderful series for the young man in your life who loves adventure and likeable characters. It gets very serious, though, so be warned!

Morris Gleitzman’s Once series starts off middle-grade and ends up YA. His hero Felix is a Jewish boy on the run from the Nazis. The books can be terribly sad but boys and girls alike at my school loved it. Felix grows up with his readers. He ends up in Australia a while after the war. If you want to know how, you will have to read it. I promise you it will be worth the effort! The language is not difficult either. 

Many of Morris Gleitzman’s books are seen from a male viewpoint(not all) and there are some wonderful ones, such as Boy Overboard, about a boy who escapes a dreadful situation in his homeland and comes by boat to Australia, only to find himself in a detention centre...

This is turning into a very long post, so I will just list a few more you can look up. 

Geoffrey McSkimming’s Cairo Jim books are middle-grade. The hero is an adult, archaeologist Cairo Jim, a sort of Indiana Jones for kids. They are hilarious! 

Oliver Phommavanh is a Sydney-based writer whose delightfully funny stories for younger readers, beginning with Thai-Riffic!, are very popular. It does help that he started his career as a primary teacher. 

Anh Do is another like him, but all his books are for younger readers, and also very popular. 

You will certainly know about Andy Griffiths, whose Treehouse books are currently so big, but he also did a series called Schooling Around - Treasure Fever, Pencil Of Doom, Mascot Madness and Robot Riot. Middle grade, but they certainly made this middle aged teacher librarian laugh out loud. They also did well in my library - there was always something missing from the shelves.

Paul Jennings was the big name in Australian children’s fiction before Andy Griffiths took centre stage. Some of his hilarious short stories became a TV series called Round The Twist. He also wrote a series about a gadget called the Gizmo, which - no, read it yourself! Both he and Andy know how to appeal to kids’ love of the gross-out. 

There’s plenty more out there for boys - and girls - to enjoy, these were just a few I thought of. No excuse for boys not to read, in my opinion! 

PS My YA fantasy novel, Wolfborn, is seen from a boy’s viewpoint too. 

Do you have some favourite boy-themed YA or children’s books to suggest?