gender neutral books for babies/toddlers

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Looking at baby/toddler books today to buy for my playgroup's Christmas party, I became totally dispirited at the lack of girls in the stories. Yes, there are some where a little girl is the main protagonist, but even then most of the other characters were male (animals, friends, dinosaurs, whatever). I would love it if authors really thought about this. Why can't the books relect real life with half the characters being female? If I had a creative bone in my body I'd write the stories myself, but I haven't so, has anyone got any suggestions for books which fulfil my obviously very demanding needs?

Rosie's walk. Female chicken!
Very Hungry Caterpillar
Room on the Broom
Audrey the Amazing inventor
We're going on a Bear Hunt
Gruffalo
Giraffes Can't Dance
The Lion Inside

I could go on. I actually think there are lots of wonderful books for toddlers

Grufflo is male. In Grufflo’s child he is the Daddy.

If you can find it, then 'No Problem' for older toddlers, by Eileen Browne. If not 'Tick tock' is brill too.

For young toddlers, the Usborne picture books always had little boy and girl and generic toddlers doing normal stuff in the little pictures.

I change the sex of all the animals. All of them. I also call every animal we see IRL 'she' unless it's obvious.

Seen this?

The Daisy duck books - in the ones DS has, main characters are mostly female.
www.amazon.co.uk/Come-Daisy-Jane-Simmons/dp/1843622726?tag=mumsnetforum-21

She acquires a baby brother later on.

Judith Kerr's Mog is a female cat - love those books.

MrsTerry - that video is fantastic! Thanks for posting it.

Zog and Zog and the Flying Doctors are both great, with a female protagonist. DS2 has a book called "If I had a dinosaur" which is about a little girl who has a pet dinosaur, which is awesome. Also, the Winnie the Witch books.

Judith Kerr's Mog books, and her Tiger who Came to Tea, both have female central characters, though the latter isn't great on the gender politics front because it's pretty dated (DH and I once spent more time than is probably sensible planning how we could update The Tiger Who Came to Tea, with Ocado and Amazon deliveries, and a trip to Pizza express...)

I change the sex of all the animals. All of them. I also call every animal we see IRL 'she' unless it's obvious.

How is that better than them all being male?

Surely better to say he some of the time and she some of the time.

Personally I want my DD to see strong, moral, courageous male and female role models in the books she reads.

The Weather Girls is lovely. Bethan Woolvin's Rapunzel and her other modernised fairy tales are good too. And I've always loved Winnie the Witch.

I can come up with loads more, I'm just rushing between kids' after-school stuff right now!

Rosie Revere, Engineer and the other Andrea Beaty books are great. All the kids have aspirations.

I can think of loads...
Pip and Posy (boy rabbit and girl mouse)
The tiger who came to tea
Brambley Hedge (loads of female animal characters)
Oi Cat (and others in the series)
Sally’s secret - one of my favourites
Mog the cat
Max and Ruby

Keep looking and you’ll find there are many books with girls and girl animals.

Anthony Browne books usually have a boy and a girl in them too - great, surreal stories

I’m also keen for some recommendations of gender stereotype smashing books aimed at boys.

Thanks for the suggestions. That video reflects exactly what I found. Agree with you dryheave, books that challenge stereotypes for boys are also needed.

It's an old one, but I like Alex's Bed - yes Alex is a boy, but his mother solves his problem about his messy bed by building him a higher bed, and there doesn't seem to be a father around so would work if you wanted to include single-parent families.

Interstellar Cinderella is about a woman who fixes rocket ships.

I've just got the three Pearl Power books as they were on special offer.

You can check the book lists at A Mighty Girl for more inspiration.

The Midnight Library by Kazuno Kohara is gorgeous with a little girl librarian and 3 librarian owls
The Ghosts in the House! Also by Kazuno Kohara where a little witch solves a ghost problem by using them as curtains and sheets.
The Adventurers by Rachel Elliot is gorgeous and all about a girl’s imagination
What the ladybird heard
Blueberry girl by Neil Gaiman

For books that encourage gentleness for boys the Moomin books aimed at 3-6 year olds are great.

The snail and the whale - the snail is a girl and saves the day.

Mabel and Me by Mark Sperring.

The Princess and the Giant by Caryl Hart.
The Princess and the Christmas Rescue by Caryl Hart.

(Don't be put off by the 'Princess' bit. These girls are pretty normal, clever and independent. In the Christmas Rescue she has a talent for Inventing and Engineering!

We are big fans of Maisy Mouse, she has a mixture of girl and boy friends. Most of the adults are male though? Mr Peacock works at the nursery school (but that is a good gender switch role model).

Maisy isn't a pink girly mouse, she wears bold colours, is often in trousers and plays with all sorts, as well as being sensible, practical and helpful.

Pip and Posy are nice books with a boy and girl as neutral characters. Not that I have read them all and we have them in a foreign language, so I don't know what they are like in the original English. But, Axel Scheffler books are nice.

Izzy Gizmo is another one - and I really like the Rosie Revere/Ada Twist/Iggy Peck books too. For smashing the "unfeeling man" stereotype, Tough Guys Have Feelings Too is superb.

How is that better than them all being male?

The rest of the world is telling her every monkey, whale and dinosaur is male. If I suggest they're all female, I'm only slightly redressing that.

It's a common complaint that feminists, and other people looking at injustice, should emulate fairness and equality. But while the world is so unequal, doing that means the average she receives is massively sexist!

Maisy and Tallulah definitely pass the Bechdel test!

I agree with MrsTerry on the latter point...I change nearly all the sexes to female and my 2 year old daughter still defaults to male pronouns for everything...because her nursery, grandparents, dad, other childrens' parents, youtube, TV and basically the whole wide world swamp my "she"s.