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Don't ask Shannon Hale why she doesn't write more books about boys.
The author of best-selling young-adult novels such as The Goose Girl and Princess Academy suggests another question: Why aren't boys reading books about girls?
Conventional wisdom long has held that boys need to be tricked into reading a book by a Susan Hinton or a Joanne Rowling. Hale is convinced that most boys don't come by that attitude naturally.
"As adults, we make that true," she said. "We assume [boys] won't read about girls."
Hale said many teachers have told her of male students grumbling when the teacher began reading Princess Academy aloud in class, only to end up being bigger fans of the book than their female classmates.
More troubling to Hale is learning that some teachers have left the boys back in the classroom when she speaks at school assemblies.
"I wonder, when a boy author goes to those schools with their books with boys on the covers, are the girls left behind?" she wrote last month on her Tumblr blog. "By not inviting [boys], we're reinforcing the wrong and often-damaging notion that there's girls-only stuff and you aren't allowed to like it."
Girls who are encouraged to read anything and everything "grow up to be flexible and to have empathy for both boys and girls," Hale said. When adults, however well-meaning, steer boys toward boy-centric literature, that lesson is missed.
Yes, many of Hale's novels -- including the Newbery Honor-winning Princess Academy and its sequel, Palace of Stone , which hits bookstores Tuesday -- feature female protagonists. But booksellers and Hale's literary peers agree that the label "girl power" hardly begins to explain their appeal.
"If a book is just about girl power, it will not be successful," said Rick Walton, one of Utah's more prolific and popular...