The American Boy
The American Boy aims to interest and help boys between the ages of twelve and twenty, recognizing the fact that to be helpful to the boy it is necessary first to secure his interest and command his attention. Stories and articles should be of such literary quality as will inculcate the best literary standards in the boy reader, as well as interest him and have an effective message. The atmosphere must be wholesome, alive, vigorous, and inspiring, and stories should be a force for good, not repelling the boy reader by too obvious moralizing, but implying the moral by the characters and the action. The magazine endeavors to put before its boys, through the medium of stories, boy heroes who can set them fine examples; in business stories, it endeavors to inculcate the principles of good business; in athletic stories, it sets forth high athletic ideals.
The American Boy is always particularly careful in the presentation of facts. Stories and articles should always teach truth. Fiction stories, of course, need not be true stories—stories of actual facts—but they should give accurate pictures of the phases of life they are representing; they should not misrepresent the facts of geography, natural science, history, business, or human relationships. Writers who get into the American Boy are those who have a story to tell—a point to make—that is worth while; a story of daring which provides a hero (always demanded by boys); a story of adventure that satisfies the boy’s natural longing to roam; a story of an exciting game which, enthralling the boy, makes clear to him what is right and what is wrong; a story of service that will aid the boy to adjust himself to social life; a story of business that will give the boy a true impression of the workaday world he is to enter. Material with a strong feminine element is not used in the American Boy; nor is “little kid” material. The average age of American Boy readers is sixteen; and boys of that age are interested in the doings, not of boys younger than themselves, but of boys their own age, or older, and of men.
Something to be borne in mind by those who essay to write for a boys’ magazine is the distinct difference between stories of boys and stories for boys. The story of boys is particularly popular just now in adult magazines. It tells of a boy from the adult viewpoint. To the adult, what the boy does is often distinctly humorous. To the boy it is serious business, and he would be properly offended should one poke fun at him in his own magazine. The story for boys must be handled from the boy viewpoint, not from the adult viewpoint. This does not mean that the story should be “written down”—quite the reverse. Once having grasped the boy viewpoint and secured the proper angle, the writer should use the same style and diction as in handling the story of similar sort for the ordinary adult publication.
The story for boys need not necessarily be a story of boys. True, a boy is more likely to be interested in a story with a boy hero than in a story of an adult hero. The magazine wishes to place before its readers fictional characters whom the boy may emulate. It is such characters which arouse his enthusiasm.
Walter P. McGuire.
The American Boy.
Detroit, Michigan.