Posted on 04/21/2014 8:01:40 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Boys are being put off reading because of the influence women have on children’s literature, says an award-winning children’s author.
Jonathan Emmett warned that children’s books were too girly because of the influence of mostly female panels of editors, publishers, reviewers and judges.
One publishing company’s research suggested women bought 95 percent of picture books for children, he added.
The writer believes boys are being starved of what they enjoy in books, such as swashbuckling pirates, battles, or technical details about spaceships, and so are driven to more action-packed video games instead. …
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
“books”
Crock. Kids like vid games because they are instant gratification entertainment.
When it takes 100 plus hours to finish a modern game and another 2-300 to find all the things to find and see the things to see, I think ‘instant gratification is not exactly the issue.
Games like Skyrim/Elder Scrols, the Fallout series, Far Cry, Deus Ex, Bioshock and others are not casual gaming. They are serious in depth ‘events’ that are not ‘instant’ by any definition. As I said in another post, it ain’t all Angry Birds anymore.
“.. school libraries keeping out the good stuff?”
As a matter of fact.. they are. In elementary school, the library is filled with female centered books. When they read in class and are evaluated for a reading level.. the story/book again is female centered. In middle school, the assigned literature for English classes usually have a female protagonist. To be honest, the only books the boy can pick out that is an interest to most boys is during the Summer reading. I can see exactly why boys turn to video games for a thrill.
Get him Heinlein’s juvenile novels. He’ll love them.
Bull.
Exposure to books, no matter how swashbuckling, does not keep the excitement of competitive games from being more fun. Games are quickly attractive. Games of all kinds.
Many, many children prefer games to books and always have. It’s not comparative.
Society will now have to deal with the generations of kids who have played video games as a major pastime. Some of these people are now adults. They are tech smart and they are quick. They have many interests, and as they reach adulthood they do seek out more outdoor activities, thank goodness. But their minds might be significantly different from the sheer numbers of hours they played and play video games. I don’t know. I’m watching it in my own home, having three sons of different ages.
One thing they have, which seems kind of fun, is that these young adults can come home after a day of school or work and sit in front of a game or movie or show with their headphones on, and their friends can all join them, and they “hang.” There can be people from the neighborhood or from the other side of the country, and they tend not to talk about their days but to watch something together, or play a game. There seems to be some comfort in being able to do this, like neighborhood kids playing ball at the park after school. They’re safe, they’re home, but they are all hanging together.
There is also another consideration there. They often CANNOT do what my and earlier generations did because of the liberal crap that has illegalized fun.
On another thread I mentioned how FR had a story about child protective services being called because parents had allowed their child to play outside in the cul de sac UNSUPERVISED.
Land closures have literally made going out in the woods and doing traditional boy stuff illegal. Boys playing army with toy guns get police called for ‘man with a gun’ scenarios. One cannot ride a bike without full plate mail armor.
Camping with your buds? No place to do it. ATV/motorcycles require long trips to ‘approved’ OHV areas.
So boys live vicariously because they have no choice. Liberals stripped them of that choice.
I have played video games with stories better than some books, Knights of the Old Republic is a prime example.
as for social bonding, 10 years ago when I was 16 it wasn’t anything better than going over to a friends house hooking up a couple TVs and yelling obscenities at each other well into the night while playing Halo 2.
but that doesn’t mean I neglected books. I read more than perhaps anyone in my grade. from “The guns of August” to “Red Storm Rising”
Can anyone name me the last great American epic that wasn’t 50 shades of Grey?
I remember when my son was in middle school. His honors English teacher kept pushing him to read “Twilight”. He said he would rather be illiterate than to read such garbage. He was and is a good reader.. it is just more manly type books. As for video games... he and his buddies must have killed a million Nazis together.
The last one was Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor and that's almost as old as I am. Been a while since an American author has put to pen something that didn't cater to the transnationalist world view.
“As for video games... he and his buddies must have killed a million Nazis together.”
Which of course is seen as bad by libs. Because it ‘promotes a sense of nationalism’ and instills a sense of good and evil, right and wrong.
It makes me crazy when people on the right start supporting that mentality, though perhaps not intentionally with anti gaming tirades ‘for the children’ because some are violent.
Sure some are violent. That’s the point of that type of game. Life can be violent. And it’s just as wrong to bubble wrap a kid (age/mental/emotional dependent considered) as it is to force it on ones not prepared for it. That is what parenting is supposed to do. Figure out when it’s OK and when not.
But ultimately, people have to accept the reality that there are far more adults playing them than kids now. So they are written for adults. with adult themes, scenarios and moral choices to make.
Our world (genX and before)no longer exists. But you cannot simply wipe all these millennial of human development from the male DNA.
You have to get a PS1 and 2 and copies of Xenogears and Xenosaga 1, 2 and 3. You have to. I promise you it is worth the expense of tracking them down. And when you consider the time they were made in, it will give you a whole new appreciation of how good a ‘video game’ story can be.
Go forth young Jedi...or Lydia will hunt you down ;)
I couldn’t pull up the article, but if it talks about what is offered in public school literature textbooks, it is very true. They are a multicultural, feminized, anti-American nightmare.
My 2yo granddaughter knows more about how an iphone works than I do.
Totally agree. My daughter at age 5 is a wiz. Puts me to shame big time.
Don’t know about “always have”.
Besides, I never saw video games as exclusively masculine anyway.
There is actually a huge subculture of gamer girls out there. Websites, forums...all of it. And they aren’t playing My Little Pony games.
The emasculated guys are.
There is a cable channel dedicated to bashing males - LMN. I think it stands for “Loser Men Network”
Heh. “Bronies” = TMI as it is.
Just don’t say anything bad about Fluttershy....that’s all I’m sayin. she’s a good conservative pony ;)
Seriously though, Games like Fallout, Skyrim and Mass Effect added strong leads and NPC females specifically to carer to the female market. And guys play’ those female characters all the time. The lead in the Xeno games I mentioned earlier wate90s/Early 2000s.
Hell, Samus from the 8 bit Nintendo was a girl...of course you didn’t find that out till the end. And that was in the 80s.
Sorry...fat fingered it
“The lead in three of the Xeno games I mentioned earlier was a female and that was in the late 90s/Early 2000s.”
Halo 2 at age 16? You’re making me feel old. I didn’t see my first Atari until I was in my early 20’s.
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