Some of you might have received an e-mail from W&A Admin which includes a link to an article on this site about this book for young readers and about how to write for young readers in general. (I didn't [strangely enough, because I'm known on this site for being a writer for young people] but a friend and colleague did, and she passed it on to me.) In case you didn't, here's the link:
https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/875/dedicated-genre-advice/writing-for-children/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Writing%20for%20Boys%20AND%20Girls&utm_campaign=How%20To%20Write%20the%20Perfect%20Villain
[Curiouser and curiouser! When I'm logged in, there's a button which says "Edit this article", even though I didn't write it. When I clicked on the button, I was transported to another page: "You have successfully logged out. To log back in, click here."]
ANYWAY, since W&A apparently doesn't cater for users' comments on commissioned articles, I thought that I'd comment HERE.
The title of the article is "Writing for Boys AND Girls", and gives advice on how not to estrange half of your intended audience. (e.g. "Joanne Rowling famously used the initials JK instead of her first name so that boys wouldn’t be put off by a female author.")
In his own case, Fanning writes:
"Black cover plus monster and explosion equals boys. Pink cover with cupcakes and butterfly equals girls. But surely there are girls who like monsters, and boys who like cupcakes?
[...]
So a cover often attracts one gender and repels the other. But I wanted to attract both. This is why my cover doesn’t include a boy or a girl. Nor does it include ‘boyish’ features of my story like swords, ninja or samurai, which might pigeon-hole the book. It’s purposefully abstract to exclude nobody but suitably revealing to give a flavour of the story."
True enough, though it DOES include the WORD "samurai", and the title is in red and black. (Perhaps Fanning should have gone for a bit of each: PINK and black.) In fact, fairly conspicuously, appears the [apparently] series title (in CAPITAL LETTERS, with "samurai" In LARGER CAPITAL LETTERS): "THE SAMURAI WARS".
Hmmm... "samurai", "wars". 2 surely "boyish" words... in CAPITAL LETTERS, yet. Methinks that Fanning is perhaps shooting himself in the foot.
In the foot, mind ye well: not in the head. Perhaps unfortunately, more and more girls are becoming attracted to the ideas of wars and SAMURAI.
Personally, I would have thought that Fanning would have much better served his own purpose if he had included that series title prominently and HAD included figures of the 3 main characters... but with the girl taking centre stage foreground, and the boys slightly behind her and to either side, partly hidden by her, if possible.
My only question: Should the boys be scowling at her or gazing admiringly? I can't say because I haven't read the book.
Nor am I likely to. I'm not attracted to books that present to young readers violence and/or super powers as necessary tools for solving their personal tragedies. And I suspect that this book presents BOTH as necessary.
The author's conclusion seems to be that you can make boys' books attractive to girls but you CAN'T make girls' books attractive to boys. That may be true, but it saddens me. Just how few boys ever REALLY liked the Alice books???
Wars, super powers. Isn't it time that we evolved from those, Mr. Fanning? Isn't it time that we offered peaceful and PRACTICABLE solutions to our young readers?
p.s. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote that when she submitted a story to Playboy Magazine, they asked her to use the name U. K. Le Guin. (WHO's gonna read sci-fi by a WOMAN??? Not, apparently, Playboy readers of those days.) She wrote that that was the only time that she's ever used a pseudonym. She has the distinction of being the 2nd most-voted (by fans of each genre) writer of all time in the TWO categories: Science Fiction (behind either Frank Herbert or Arthur C. Clarke, I forget which: for me Le Guin is far superior to both) and Fantasy (behind - of course - Tolkien, to whom she is also far superior).
How many male authors ever used their initials in order to disguise the fact that they were male?
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