Kids books - find this really worrying

Projecting, your post re Peppa did remind me of something else I wanted to say - which is that I bloody love Peppa! And get quite bothered by readers/watchers who describe her as badly behaved, obnoxious, etc. Because to me, she's a nice girl, who is clever, has strong opinions, states them vigorously, and is also kind. I feel a lot of the opposition to her is patriarchally driven (what? A young female? Stating her opinions?) Many parents of my acquaintance have told me they don't like their dc watching Peppa because she's such a bad role model, and I utterly disagree. She's a decently strong female character, in my opinion. (Yes, there is a fair bit of casual sexism elsewhere in the stories, but choosing to ignore this for now).
So I quite like that dd enjoys the Peppa offering,

Perhaps you could do that then Beaky? It would take 5 mins to count how many of the books have a. a solely female title or cover illustration, b. a solely male title or cover illustration or c. neither.

As opposed to an hour and a half to read over 40 books, which it doesn't look like anyone is going to do. And it might give am idea as to whether there is a bias towards males before the books are even open.

Not in this house op, although that's mainly because the book shelf is 90% fucking Peppa....

My DD read lots of princess books. She dressed as a princess to pick up her brother from school at 4. Was generally sparkly and pink. The first ya book she read was The Hunger Games.
As a teen she is a convinced feminist and argues forcefully with those who make sexist comments.
The dreadful books she read now provide us with great grounds for discussion.

Not in the slightest bit helpful but was watching a documentary about Lewis Carroll recently which pointed out that Alice was the first female main character of a children's book, and extremely intelligent with it.

Yet she was probably only the hero because of Dodgson's extremely unhealthy obsession with young girls & to me the whole book has always given me the creeps and comes across as an attempt at grooming.

I would add that there has been a recent emphasis on trying to get boys to read, based on the view that boys are more reluctant readers, so that might account for the boy-focus in recent children's literature.

OP, you're quite right, it is an issue.
In my (feminist) household we are currently struggling with the fact that dd's favourite story, in all the world, is Little Red Ridinghood. So patriarchal in message! Am considering just re-writing a version with pure gender reversal, and otherwise leaving it as it is (not sure yet what that would be like, it might still seem a bit of a hateful story!)
Getting distracted there, but yes, totally agree with you. And would like to do something,but don't know what.

My children are teens and choose their own books mostly now. I made some very conscious choices to seek out books with strong female leads once they had real stories, but I would strongly suspect that if I pulled out the box of small children's picture books that I have kept for potential grandchildren the vast majority of characters would be 'he', in a context where 'she' would work just as well, and I suspect that when I was reading them aloud to my children I wouldn't have thought about it at all. It was just the default that a character of indeterminate sex was 'he'. And yes I avoided all the pick sparkly princess crap that might have changed the balance a bit. I have an older son and slightly younger daughter, all books at that age were for both of them.

Massive x posts! Should have refreshed. But I didn't read the Aliens books as 'he', from memory. Must go and check.

Didn't you find any non-gendered items? Things like the Aliens love Underpants books for example I chose specifically because they weren't gendered at all.

So the Mr Men books aren't sexist, but the assumption that Mr Men and the female equivalent needed to be in separate series in the first place is a reflection of society that splits by gender as is the fact that Mr Men was commenced 10 years before Little Miss.

"Dinosaurs Love Underpants" isn't sexist, but the fact that all the dinosaurs are "he" is, again, a reflection of a society where a default animal, driver, diver, paraglider is male. Catch yourself over the next week using either the male or female pronoun when you don't know the sex, and see which you use more.

I too think you are getting a hard time, OP.

You might find this interesting;
womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/files/2013_It%27s_a_Man%27s_World_Report.pdf

ManOf, the OP is not saying that her book collection is sexist just because it has primarily male leads. Just as a film isn't sexist if it fails the Bechdel test but not sexist if it doesn't. The SATC films both pass the test, for example, whereas there are doubtless episodes of Buffy that fail.

What it's contrasting is frequency of focus. It is a lot rarer for films to fail the reverse Bechdel, even films with a female lead or female ensemble.

To some extent you are talking about male and female leads, because your OP mentioned lots of books with all male casts, which is definitely going to remove female share of voice.

But I thought your OP highlighted all male casts and 25% of female references?

In fact you said this explicitly in your first post

If we're talking older books the current ones also feature great female leads, Goth Girl, Northern Lights, The Hunger Games. It can be argued that Hermione in Harry Potter was one of the 'leads' being pretty essential to most plot line, using her intellect and bravery to save pretty much everyone most of the time.

As I'm in the publishing world, I've been at many recent meetings where publishing houses are very keen to find good, strong stories that will appeal to boys (although of course but not solely for boys) as they find that many boys loose interest in reading at a young age sadly. The picture books that they push the most are gender neutral ones that are just great stories with great characters which will stick in the mind of the public.

Children's publishing is run by women in general (99% of editors, marketing people and designers I work with are women). I can assure, I've never come across any 'agenda' that keeps stories with strong female leads out of books.

Now interestingly, I would say that the classic children's books tend to be surprisingly unsexist.

Think about Narnia, Swallows and Amazons (Susan easily balanced out by Nancy ), E. Nesbit's books, One End Street, etc etc. Loads of strong girl characters.

Okay, my kids - one boy one girl are now teenagers. I have pulled the top 50 picture books from a box, all bought about 10-15 years ago. I haven't gone through and counted every character, but from the characters on the front cover - about 80% female.

Most common female characters-

Mrs. Armitage
Milly Molly Mandy
Mog the Cat
Meg the Witch
Winnie the Witch
Miffy
Little Red Riding Hood and other assorted Ladybird style fairy tale characters.

I didn't think about the gender when buying the books, and most were bought for DS as he is the eldest, and got handed down to DD. The ladybird ones are probably quite traditional and sexist, but Mrs Armitage certainly is not!

Off the top of my head, strong female picture book leads would be....(bear in mind they might not be very very well known titles).

Emily Brown and the Thing
This Rabbit belongs to Emily Brown
Hubble Bubble books by Tracey Corderoy and Joe Berger
The Princess and The Peas by Caryl Hart
The Paper bag Princess
Mabel and Me (best of friends)
Angelina Ballerina (yes Ballet etc but lots of strong female characters and Angelina is no push over)
Charlie and Lola.
Little Princess by Tony Ross

Plenty more, just look beyond the Juila Donaldson selection you get in most places. Nothing wrong with Donaldson but there's other stuff.

Visit the library perhaps as they have a wider range of books than any of us.

And I wouldn't necessarily agree with bluelamp. The Mr Men collection may be all male based but that in itself doesn't make them sexist.