Mama Feminista

Mama Feminista's Bookshelf: Books for Girls and Boys

Even though it is challenging to find books that represent girls in ways that are empowering, there are some beautiful books that feature girls which would be fun additions to any child's library.

 Some of our current favorites right now are:

Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match, by Monica Brown (Ages 1-8*)

This bilingual book is aimed at kids 4-8, but even our one year old is engaged by the quirky and colorful illustrations. The text is presented twice, once in English and once in Spanish. My Marisol is 3 and this book is her favorite not only because it has her name in it (although that is so cool for a little kid), but because Marisol McDonald is a strong, independent, smart girl. 

The story begins by establishing that Marisol "doesn't match" because she has her Irish dad's red hair, and her Latina mom's brown skin.  She also likes to wear bright mismatched clothes in whatever combination pleases her. Even when she plays, she doesn't like to be limited to just playing one kind of game--she wants to play pirates and soccer. She tries to match one day and, thankfully, finds that matching is possible, but not that much fun. She decides, along with her teacher's support, to go back to being exactly who she is.

The story touches on issues of race and gender, but doesn't do it in an obvious way. The kids in the story are of different races, and it's never mentioned.  Most of all, Marisol McDonald's story shows that we don't need to conform in order to be loved. 

Chavela and the Magic Bubble, also by Monica Brown (Ages 1-8*)

This bilingual story is probably aimed at kids a bit older, but my 1 year old LOVES this book. She squeals with delight everytime we read it. I think it's because of the amazing illustrations which are rich and vibrant.  Like Marisol McDonald, the text is complete in both languages, so you don't need to know Spanish to get the whole narrative. The story is simple and sweet--little Chavela loves bubble gum and one day her abuela buys her a piece of magical gum. 

This gum takes her flying into Mexico to a chicle farm, where she meets a little girl who tells her of the farmers who harvest the chicle.  In the end, it turns out that the little girl she met was Chavela's own grandmother, sharing the family history as agricultural workers. The story is magical and tender. The relationship between the grandmother and granddaughter is portrayed lovingly and made me nostalgic for my own abuelita.

Ladybug Girl and Ladybug Girl at the Beach, by Jacky Davis and David Soman (Ages 1-8*)

You've probably heard of this popular series, but we love it too much to leave it out. Lulu is an independent, creative, funny, and kind girl.  There is so much to like about her character. She is shown playing independently in the stories--exploring the wood behind her house, playing on the beach and having all kinds of imagined and real adventures with her dog as her only company.  

Grown-ups are not central figures in the stories. It's about Lulu and her world. She does try to play with her brother, but when he leaves her out for being "too little," she finds ways to make her own fun.

One of the things I appreciate about these books, which you can see in the Beach book is that Lulu is drawn like a real girl, with a healthy little tummy. She isn't given a prematurely tiny waist and hips like what happend to Dora recently. (I'm still sad about that!) No. Lulu is a strong, healthy girl with a wild imagination who learns to overcome her fears and find adventures.

This is not just a great book for girls, though. Boys need to read stories like this too because this is what girls are really like. They are not all damsels in distress or princesses or mommies. They are kids, looking for an adventure, just like boys!  I think boys would be able to relate just as well to being told they are "too little" by a bigger kid or being afraid of the ocean. (All the books on this list would be well-suited to all kids.)

Color Kittens, by Margaret Wise Brown (Ages 1-5)

We were just given this book for christmas in a board book edition--yay for board books!  It's not about girls or race or anything, except colors and the fun that can be had making new colors and painting. But I'm listing it here because unlike MOST books with animals, including most Golden Books, the kittens are gender-free. Woohoo! No, seriously, WOOHOO! The kittens are never referred to as male or female, so we can make them girls if we want or leave them genderless. It is so refreshing not to have another animal book that is by default all about male animals.  

Also, it's a very very cute little book with adorable illustrations. It's fun to read and our girls enjoy the whimsical drawings.

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I plan to keep posting media that is either girl-positive or just plain not sexist. I hope you enjoy this beginning and I'd love suggestions for future inclusion in the series. We are always looking for books that depict gender equality, diversity, and all other healthy things.

Happy Reading!

*Note: the age range is just my estimation of what age child would enjoy this story. The publisher's have their own reading level guide, but I'm assuming we are reading to our children, so my ranges start earlier.

 

Sexism on the Children's Book Shelf

Sometimes I wish I could turn off my "feminist lens" and not see everything with gender and equality in mind because frankly, it's exhausting.

It would be so much easier to be satisfied with media that either segregates girls into pink ghettos or leaves them out completely, since that's what is currently available in mainstream culture. But I want so much better for my girls. I want them to see characters like them in awesome movies (cough, Pixar, cough). I don't need most things to be girl-centered, but would like most things not to erase girls by omitting them from the universe (see Reel Girl's post on Tin Tin), or representing them in ways that are patronizing.  

Women and girls are a part of this world and erasing them from popular narratives is a potent form of sexist erasure. 

Fortunately, my "feminist lens" is not just part of my point of view; it IS my point of view. I can't help it. And even though it is exhausting and often demoralizing to see how much gender inequality exists, it is also crucial to my work as a mother because it is my job to teach my children that people of all genders matter and can be powerful.

Let's Talk About Books

Oh, man. We love books round these parts, but starting with board books there are PROBLEMS, people. Problems.  Right now, the overwhelming majority of popular kids' media features mostly boys and grossly excludes girls.

A few surprising examples from our own book collection (that we bought ourselves):

This book looks totally cute, right? Well, it is, except that all the characters are either gender neutral or male.  Now, the characters are toddlers, so they mostly look gender neutral (as long as you are willing to believe that girls wear non-pink clothes, which we do), but whenever there is a gendered pronoun, it is male.  We have kept this book because it's easy to switch the genders when we read it, and in fact, with a magic marker, even the text only needs an "s" on a couple of pages to make the representation 50/50 male to female.  I just have to wonder though, why didn't it occur to the lovely Karen Katz that a girl might want to be a superhero too?

 Okay, so you're thinking I'm just too picky, right? Well, I would agree, except...

 I love Curious George! He's just so.... curious. He perfectly embodies the desire that all children have to explore and play. His stories are great fun. My issue is that in many of his stories there are exactly ZERO female characters. From his "friend with the yellow hat" to the bumbling officers, it's a land of men, not just species-wise.  I was thrilled recently to find one book with a female paleontologist! A woman and a scientist! We'll be adding that one to our collection for sure. It almost made me want to forgive H.A. Rey. Almost.

Then there's this:

I know, I KNOW. It's Sesame Street! We adore Sesame Street! We watch that Feist video a million times! But the Street has a problem and it's that there are almost no females there, and those that do occasionally hang out, like Betty Lou, or more recently, Abby Cadabby, tend to be on the boring side and very traditionally gendered.  Elmo and Grover and Cookie and Grouch are beloved not because they are male, but because they are cool and have great adventures and are hilarious.

Can't they just have whoever does those characters do female ones, the SAME way, but call them Greta and Ella? That would be so much better than this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although, for full disclosure, I do kind of love Rosita.  More like her, and less faeries/ballerinas please.

But for sure, no more: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poor Prairie Dawn always just made me sad. 

Okay, so that got a little silly. But do you see what I'm saying here?  Even in super cool books for kids, like this one:

 There is ONLY ONE main female character. She's the mouse with the big black eyes and poofy hair-do. While the other characters all get a neat little character description, such as "Ming...the one who made all the decisions," "Butterscotch," the female mouse, is described as "the girl in the group." Because being a female is her only quality? WTF!!?!?!?! This one really made me mad because the writer herself is female, and contemporary, and this is an otherwise pretty groovy comic storybook for kids.  As you can see, there are six main characters in the book. I don't even need the title character to be female, but why not the friendly bunny, or even just a couple more mice? We live in a world where half the population is female. I don't get it.  To be completely fair, there are some human characters at the end of the book, which play a small role in the story.  Including those, the population of the book is 21 characters: 12 male, 9 female. But most of those human characters appear only once, briefly, as in one of a group with no lines. By the end, there are 3 females total with a line, and 8 males total with one or more lines. Crappy.

I could go on. But I won't. Not today, at least. I just wanted to show that having a feminist lens is important even for parents of real young kids. I don't want my children growing up only hearing stories about boys, or just as bad, only hearing interesting stories about boys and thinking that girls can only be princesses and ballerinas. They can be that, and so so much more.  

We haven't gotten rid of the books listed here. They are still here, right over on the children's bookshelf.  We don't want our girls to miss out on these cool stories, but we make a great effort to add female counterparts to these narratives.

It shouldn't be this hard. It should be easy and it's not. I remember growing up learning that it was traditional to use the male pronoun as the default and thinking how antiquated that seemed. Sadly, that's still the norm in most children's books; stories which could be about either boys or girls, or about both, default to being stories just about boys, for no good reason. 

We have found some pretty awesome books that include girls in them, and I'll be sure to post those soon and to keep posting those to encourage other parents to share stories with their girls AND boys that represent the real world, the one with girls and women in them. It's a good world.