BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM
If you want to counter toxic masculinity, don’t start with a think piece. Simply hand a boy a book.
That’s the quiet but powerful idea rippling through this year’s Carnegie medals for children’s writing, where male friendship and nuanced portrayals of masculinity took center stage. In an era of growing concern over the manosphere’s influence and a sharp drop in boys’ reading habits, these stories are offering something rare and radical: emotional depth, vulnerability, and connection among boys.
A shift in the bookshelf tides
Margaret McDonald’s Glasgow Boys, which won the top medal, explores the fragile friendship between Banjo and Finlay, two looked-after teens navigating trauma and the thresholds of adulthood. As McDonald puts it, the characters exist on a “spectrum of masculinity,” with Banjo embodying violence and aggression while Finlay is gentle, introverted, and empathetic.
McDonald faced an uphill battle to get the book published. Rejected by 60 agents and 20 publishers, she suspects a mix of factors played a role: the use of Scots dialect, the timing during the pandemic, and yes, the challenge of selling a book about boys in a market that prioritizes female readers. “I think because there’s such a small readership it’s difficult, in a business sense, to cut out the bigger readership – which is girls and women,” she reflects.
The pendulum swings again
Ros Harding, chair of this year’s Carnegie panel, sees a pendulum shift in publishing. “We’ve gone from boys-as-heroes adventure books to a backlash that made sure girls had their turn in the spotlight,” she explains. “Now another wave of books is addressing boys again.”
What makes these new stories compelling isn’t that boys are back in the spotlight; it’s how they’re portrayed. Not as stoic saviors or comic relief, but as layered individuals capable of growth and tenderness.
Boys see themselves differently in stories
When boys do pick up these books, something interesting happens. According to McDonald, male readers tend to latch on to the characters individually (“I related to Finlay” or “I’m like Banjo”), while girls focus more on the relationships. It hints at how boys might be entering stories differently. They don’t necessarily settle into stories to explore connection, but to locate themselves.
And that might be the point. As Harding, a librarian, notes, boys often read more narrowly than girls, gravitating to books with male protagonists. “A girl who likes reading will read anything,” she says. “Boys were just a little bit more resistant.”
From laughter to empathy: the arc of King of Nothing
That insight is central to Nathanael Lessore’s King of Nothing, winner of the Shadower’s Choice medal, voted on by young readers themselves. His protagonist, Anton, is a swaggering pre-GCSE tough guy whose world is shaped by gang culture and influencer toxicity. But when he forms a surprising friendship with the school’s most uncool boy, his worldview starts to shift.
The book begins with raucous humor but deepens into something far more moving. It’s a literary bait-and-switch, drawing boys in with laughs and showing them a new way to be.
Lessore has a personal stake in the issue. King of Nothing was inspired partly by the realization that his young nephew and cousin, then nine and 13, were watching Andrew Tate videos. In schools across economic backgrounds, he sees how boys self-segregate, hurl homophobic insults, and disrespect female teachers.
His response? Start the school visits with stats. “Teenagers who read more tend to [get] higher paid jobs as adults,” he tells students. It grabs their attention. Then the story does the rest.
One boy, one book, one shift
Books, Lessore believes, can still make a dent. “Even the more disruptive boys on the school visit tend to, you know, barge their way to the front of the queue to get their book signed,” he says. “It’s a drop. But, yeah, like: one kid at a time, one school at a time.”
And that might be enough. Novels have long been called empathy machines. They’re seen as tools to understand others and, perhaps more crucially in this context, to understand oneself. When boys see characters like Banjo, Finlay, or Anton grapple with feelings, friendships, and identity, it offers a counter to the often destructive narratives elsewhere.
The books aren’t shouting solutions. But they are whispering possibilities.
