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\nI have three of them, and I\u2019ve gotta admit, they are vocal about what they like and don\u2019t like. An awful lot of the time, that appears to be: cars, trains, robots, sharks, dinosaurs, soldiers, blowing things up, the color blue, and anything totally gross\u2014boogers and farts.<\/p>\nBut they also love: cute baby animals, mermaids, kittens, puppies, frogs, ants, science, paleontology, stories that \u201caren\u2019t TOO scary\u201d, bad guys who turn out to be good guys, singing and dancing, rainbows and anything with chocolate.<\/p>\n
What about older boys? What do they like to read? Harry Potter, of course\u2026 remember how delighted everyone was at the thought that thanks to Harry Potter ten year old boys were actually reading books? One of the concerns of teachers is that it\u2019s harder to get boys to read than girls throughout most of the academic ladder\u2014including up to college.<\/p>\n
What makes a book masculine-friendly? I asked my \u2028husband and he said BFGs and T&A. Thanks, sweetheart. \ud83d\ude09 Kids cartoons have everything color-coded quite maniacally. But young adult and adult books really aren\u2019t much different. You can tell from the cover which demographic the book is aimed at.<\/p>\n
The feminist in me always feels guilty if I \u201ccave in\u201d to gender stereotypes. It would be nice if stories could transcend that kind of straightjacket, wouldn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
But what if by getting so obsessed with the trappings of the story,we\u2019re actually making the same mistake of judging things by the outer appearance and not the inner essence of the story? A while ago, Lego came out with Lego Friends: super cute Lego girls and Legos that came in pink and lilac and aquamarine. (Squeeee!!!! They are so awesome!!!!!) Inevitably, some people came and chewed out Lego for being sexist.<\/p>\n
The shiny things that attract that atavistic part of ourselves probably is different in girls than boys. I remember reading some mind-boggling study that said there may be a biological reason most girls like pink better than
\nmost boys\u2014most females have more red receptors in their eyes than most males.<\/p>\n
Holy cow. Here I was, blaming Matel. I don\u2019t know about you, but that blew my mind. It also made me think that well-intentioned feminist parents who won\u2019t let their daughters wear pink princess dresses are really missing the point.<\/p>\n
If there really is a biological base for the love of pink, then it isn\u2019t much more sexist to have a dearth of pink Legos?<\/p>\n
The fear is that it\u2019s all a slippery slope. Once you admit that pink might be rooted in biology, then you\u2019ve as good as tied an apron around your daughter\u2019s waist and chained her in the kitchen.<\/p>\n
Or\u2026 maybe we could consider another possibility. Just because some primitive parts of ourselves, the inner cave people, are sexist, doesn\u2019t mean that the best and most cherished parts of our minds are as well. The values that men and women are most likely to share equally also happen to be the highest values of our humanity: friendship, loyalty, courage, intelligence, love\u2026.<\/p>\n
Now for the quiz!<\/p>\n
Can you guess whether the following stories are aimed at boys or girls? I\u2019ll give you just a few clues.<\/p>\n
STORY 1: Pink. Ponies. Designing hats.<\/p>\n
STORY 2: Trucks. Killer robot. Wrist device shooting green slime.<\/p>\n
STORY 3: MC promises wants to do something. Although friends offer to help, MC is too proud to accept help. Finally, after MC is literally stuck, accepts help from friends and realizes there\u2019s no shame in it.<\/p>\n
STORY 4: MC and group of friends decide to race. MC is so busy trying to win that begins to lose friendship. Then a friend gets hurt and MC realizes friends are more important than winning.<\/p>\n
Have you written down your answers yet?<\/p>\n
It probably wasn\u2019t too hard to guess that Story 1 was aimed at girls, and Story 2 was aimed at boys. But what about Story 3 and Story 4? It wasn\u2019t as obvious, was it?<\/p>\n
Why is that?<\/p>\n
The clues from Story 1 and Story 2 were all about the out trappings of the story: the colors, the creatures, the goo. The clues from Story 3 and Story 4 were about values. Unless you knew that Story 4 involved pink ponies and Story 3 involved blue trucks, you\u2019d never know one was targeted at girls and the other at boys. In fact, you could reverse the plots but keep the color schemes, and superficially, the entire demographic of the story would change.<\/p>\n
But what do you think? What makes a book more appealing to boys or girls? Do you think men and women are more or less open to reading omnivorously?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have a son who is learning to read. I want to write stories that will be of \u2028interest and value to him. I know the \u2028values that I believe are universal to sentient beings, but are there elements which are particularly attractive \u2028to the little boy goobers out there? image: Pink Sherbert Photography I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,87,88,203,287,577],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childrens-books","category-childrens-lit","category-childrens-literature","category-gender-roles","category-kid-book","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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