Yes, Because Nothing Urges Children To Read Better Than A ‘Worthy’ Book With A Mission

This year’s Carnegie medals for children’s writing, awarded on Thursday, brought to light an unexpected trend. At a time of widespread public anxiety about the decline in boys’ reading habits and the rise of the toxic influencers of the online “manosphere”, male friendship and masculinity were front and centre on the shortlist.

Well, if preachy literature can’t solve this, what can? We clearly can’t rely on proper parenting, can we? 

The winner, Margaret McDonald’s superb debut, Glasgow Boys, tells the story of the relationship between two looked-after children on the threshold of adulthood who process trauma in different ways. Banjo’s aggression and Finlay’s avoidance could be seen as two models of dysfunctional masculinity. Luke Palmer’s Play, also on the shortlist, tells a story of male friendship which touches on rape culture and county lines drug gangs, while teenage gang membership is the focus of Brian Conaghan’s Treacle Town.

Ah, remember when children’s literature was full of adventures in far-off lands or fantasy worlds, rather than avoiding getting stabbed by the local imported hoodlums? 

Nathanael Lessore won the Shadower’s Choice medal (voted for by young readers). King of Nothing tells the story of Anton, a pre-GCSE hardman for whom reputation is everything. Anton hangs out with a thuggish crowd whose worldview is shaped by gang culture and Tate-like influencers. The arc of the plot – boisterously comic at first, but increasingly moving – shows how Anton’s developing friendship with the uncoolest boy in the school changes his priorities.

Ugh!  

Though the books were judged for their individual qualities, the panel’s chair, Ros Harding, observes a pendulum-swing in publishing. “We’ve gone from children’s adventure books, where it was always the boy as the hero, then there was a backlash against that, making sure that girls could be the heroes as well, which then maybe led to some boys feeling that things weren’t being written for them.” Now, she says, “another wave of books” is addressing that.

The people they broke something being the best ones to fix it?  

The explosion in so-called toxic masculinity is taking place at the same time as statistics tell us that reading for pleasure, especially among boys, is on the decline.

I wonder why? 

Novels are empathy machines: they invite you to imagine what it might be like to be somebody else. So they are, at least potentially, an antidote to the misogynistic influence of the manosphere and gaming culture.

if they ever perform that function, it’s usually as a side effect, rather than a main plot objective. Children aren’t stupid, and are really good at sensing when they are being patronised and preached to.