AustLit

'For the last 30 years, we have been warned that there is a crisis with boys' reading skills. This is usually located within a larger panic about the perceived decline in general academic skills amongst boys. This again often mutates into conservative jeremiads against the “war on boys”, where natural masculinity is being drained away by an ill-defined but nevertheless pervasive conspiracy against clear gender roles. The way to get boys reading again, so these observers argue, is to reintroduce them to “manly” tomes such as Kipling's Captains Courageous, Twain's Huck Finn and Hinton's The Outsiders. As Troy Potter's Books for Boys notes, even governmental agencies are forced into proposing reading matter which it is presumed will interest typical boys—action, mystery, fantasy and detective fiction are mentioned (3). Dealing with the perceived crisis inevitably becomes a policing of gender roles and these genres develop a reciprocal relationship with the reader, both responding to and producing masculinity norms. Problems emerge, however, when these books promote masculine ideals that are white, able-bodied, heterosexual and working class.' (Introduction)