Abstract
The present study was an investigation of juvenile and adolescent preferences for sex and age of main characters in books. Subjects for the study were male (V = 2,487) and female (A = 2,366) students in grades 4 through 10 from a nationwide population. Students were asked about their preferences about characteristics of story/book protagonists. Statistically significant trends revealed by the data indicated that: 1) the importance of male protagonists to male students decreases as grade level increases; 2) the importance of female protagonists to male readers increases with higher grade levels; and 3) the importance of male main characters to female students increases with increases in grade level. Further, the age of the main character relative to the age of the reader was shown to be a fairly potent characteristic at ail grade levels although reading about younger protagonists becomes less desirable as students grow older.
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