Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale

by Kenneth B. Kidd

Will boys be boys? What are little boys made of? Kenneth B. Kidd responds to these familiar questions with a thorough review of boy culture in America since the late nineteenth century. From the "boy work" promoted by character-building organizations such as Scouting and 4-H to current therapeutic and pop psychological obsessions with children's self-esteem, Kidd presents the great variety of cultural influences on the changing notion of boyhood. Analyzing icons of boyhood and maleness from Huck Finn and The Jungle Book's Mowgli to Father Flanagan's Boys Town and even Michael Jackson, Kidd surveys films, psychoanalytic case studies, parenting manuals, historical accounts of the discoveries of "wolf-boys," and self-help books to provide a rigorous history of what it has meant to be an all-American boy.

Genres: Research, Nonfiction, Criticism

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Kenneth B. Kidd is a professor of English at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He works in Anglophone children’s literature studies, and is particularly interested in the connections between that literature and the areas of philosophy, psychology, and critical theory. He earned his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, and previously taught at Eastern Michigan University.

Reviews

[Stephen Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kidd has found some very fascinating material in the archive--weird stories about fastidious men teaching other men's sons how to operate tractors, oddly revealing and yet surprisingly unsensational news accounts of boy scout leaders forced to resign once their proclivities crossed a certain transgressive barrier--yet what he does with all this material tends to be lackluster. I found myself wanting more stirring close readings and a more cohesive argument that would tie everything together, but instead the material just cycled around provocative but vague ideas that never quite connected.

[Cara Byrne · Rating 3 out of 5]

In his study of the discourses surrounding boyhood, Kidd explores American literary and popular understandings and creations of boyology and the feral tale. As I am interested in the construction of African American boyhood and identity, his argument that “normal” boyhood is constructed as white, middle class and feral tales often featuring exoticized portrayals of boys (think Mowgli from Kipling’s The Jungle Book or the Christ-like Elian Gonzolez whose story made headlines when he traveled in shark-infested waters from Cuba to the US in the late 1999s) are of most use for/interest to me. His text provides a wealth of criticism on material from the late nineteenth century to today, though I would have liked his take on how some of the popular understandings of boyhood have made their way into contemporary children’s literature. He does this a bit with his discussions ofTeen Woolf, but I would have liked more in the last chapter. I find it interesting that he ends the book by stating: “I’ve written Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale as a way of working through my growing ambivalence about boyology in all its forms, chief among them literature. To the degree that it’s possible, I’d like now to leave boyology behind” (190).

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

fascinating subject. sadly, the writing often gets in the way.