Yesterday at the library I talked to the mother of an 8 year old girl who wants to be a boy. When asked why she wants to be a boy, she replied that boys get to do all the 'cool stuff' they get to go on adventures, be pirates and action heroes and generally be cool.
In all the tv and movies and books this 8 year old has encountered she has found no girls doing this kind of thing. Her mum wanted to know if there were any books we could recommend that show girls being the action hero.
The books that came to mind first for me were The Paperbag Princess by Robert Munsch and The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye because of the stereotype reversal and because Paperbag princess was my favourite book when I was a kid.
Then I thought of the obvious solution: Tamora Pierce books!
I especially recommended Alanna: the First Adventure because of the whole girl has to pretend to be boy to do these things and because it's a fantastic book. Hopefully the kid will get into it and read the whole series and I can put her onto First Test as well.
The only other ones I could think of were Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine and a bunch of Young Adult novels that would be beyond an 8 year old. I went ahead and told her mum about The Changeover by Margaret Mahy anyway because that's cool.
It was a worrying exchange though, her mum is a dedicated feminist and her heart was breaking because her daughter thinks that being a girl is boring and useless. It was much harder to think of good kid's movies that show a string female lead action hero. They'd already tried and rejected Spy Kids, Thunderbirds and a bunch of other stuff. I suggested Kim Possible but that's all I had.
Posted by jenni at August 5, 2005 03:26 PM