Going back to the question of data — in my experience, yes, those books exist, but there are relatively few compared to other genres (for lack of a better word) — with protagonists of either gender. And there are especially relatively few with male protagonists when you cut out the ones that skew to the 12-14 end of YA — I see a much larger selection in the middle school collection, but my boys don’t want 8th grade protagonists. There are also books with male protagonists that don’t fit the rest of the description, all of which matters statistically (and here, and makes for interesting discussion) but matters not a whit for me as a working librarian with flesh and blood students. And finally (whew!), stats are one thing but package and tone are another; The Disenchantments counts as a male protagonist book published in 2012, but no way can I sell that to a boy. Me and Earl I absolutely can!

The women over at Lady Business have a very interesting article that chips away at this often-bandied claim. Click here to read it.

Granted, their analysis looks only at award-winning YA books since 2000–that is, 22 English-language awards–because gathering data on all books published since 2000 is a task I don’t think anyone has achieved (but it’s a dataset Jen J. and I would dearly love to have). So there may be some selection bias if “boy” books are lauded more than “girl” books. Nevertheless, here’s what they found:

In total, 49% of award-winners had male protagonists, 36% had female protagonists, and 15% had both male and female protagonists. They also break the totals down by individual awards, and Printz winners have 61% male, 31% female, and 8% both, while Printz honors have 49% male, 42% female, and 9% both. The Morris awards are dead even at 50% male and 50% female.

(The article also analyzes the gender of award-winning YA authors, if you’re interested in that.)

H.Munca, I was just thinking the same thing about a Morris blog. There are enough debuts this year for nearly daily posts if that Goodreads list is accurate. You volunteering?

Christopher, I’m assuming from the context that by chuffed you meant annoyed, not pleased, yes? In which case, let me clarify my position about Me and Earl being a “boy book” — I am talking about the characters. I’m not gendering the general audience. I do confess to targeting boys among my own students, but only because I have a number of male readers who like realistic, funny but not dumb novels with male protagonists, and frankly, there aren’t that many books like that. Most of my female readers, even those with overlapping taste, have plenty to read given the volume of books with female protagonists, which are hellza more common. But that’s a whole other ball of wax. As far as Me and Earl goes, I just think it’s an awesome book ABOUT boys.

In the off season, maybe we should have a revisit the best oldies that deserved the Printz only it didn’t exist thread. We’ll put Kestrel on the discussion list. First on the list.