Children's books revisited: Putting children's lit theory into practice

My niece and nephew are visiting for the summer. In an effort to keep them from being bored and to encourage them to participate in educational activities, I brought them to the local library today. I tried looking up books with a feminist message, but had little luck. I tried using Jackie's list of books featuring girls and boys acting in non-traditional gender roles, but none of them were available. I wasn't surprised. My town is a small, conservative one, so I didn't have high expectations. But I kept wandering the aisles and 'lo and behold, I found political books in the Juvenile section.
Jacob, my nephew, and I browsed the books and I encouraged him to check out one about Racism. We are Puerto Rican and "being a little brown boy," as he put it, is something he can understand. I told him to try it out and, if he liked it, we'd check out more political books in the future.

Finding a good book for my niece, Ariana, was a little trickier. She's only seven, and not yet at an advanced reading age. But we found a small - very small - section of books in Spanish. Jacob and Ariana both want to learn the language, but she's especially shy about speaking it. But we picked out one called I am Latino: The Beauty in Me and another, an old Cuban story, that was entirely all in Spanish.

We sat down to read I am Latino. She was really hesitant at first, but ended up liking it. There are Spanish words interspersed throughout the book, so she was speaking Spanish without even realizing it. By the end, she decided to check it out. It's frustrating that Latinos even need a book to convince them that they're beautiful, but I'll take what I can get.

I'm still looking for good books for the kids, so if you know of any, please leave your suggestions in the comments. For more information about feminist books for kids, check out The Amelia Bloomer Project, Nontraditional Pursuits of Boys and Girls, Veganfamily.co.uk and this list on Amazon.

Gender Roles in Children's Books

This semester, I took a Children's Literature class. It's been an interesting class so far; we've learned about nursery rhymes and picture books and novels. We've discussed illustrations as art. And we've discussed censorship and "different perspectives" (which my teacher defined as, books about individuals who are "different" from us). Two weeks from finals, and we haven't discussed a certain topic, and this really surprises/upsets me.

Gender roles portrayed in children's books!

Traditional gender roles are typically forced onto children from a young age through images they see on TV, the toys they play with, their parents, and yes even children's books.
Girls are typically nurturers and passive. Boys are typically adventurers and independent.
But, let's face it, not every girl wants to play with dolls and restaurant sets, and not every boy wants to play sports or cops and robbers.

I'll bypass fairy tales and tall tales, because I'm sure we all know those are filled to the brim with sexist bull crap. But, several decades after women's rights movements, books portraying traditional gender roles (and occasionally, in the case of Douglas Wood's What Moms Can't Do ans What Dads Can't Do, sexist bull crap) line the shelves of libraries.



Of 35 of these recommended picture books showing girls pursuing non-traditional gender roles I could find only 15 in my university library.
Of 21 of these recommended picture books showing boys pursuing non-traditional gender roles I could only find 6 in my university library.



Strictly considering picture books, of my university's there are about 16 other books portraying non-traditional gender roles. In a library with four long rows of children's book


I'm not saying boycott the rest of the books because many still teach important values. I'm saying add more books that portray non-traditional gender roles. Books are important in helping young readers develop a perception of themselves as well as society. To incorporate most books portraying non-traditional gender roles could help relieve totally preposterous gender stereotypes.



To read more on gender roles in children's books, check out this article.

-Jackie