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?

I think the Me in Monkey and Me is a girl IIRC (by Emily Gravett)

Brown bear brown bear what do you see?
Ten little fingers and ten little toes
Who’s in the loo?

Too much time on my hands so I gathered up all of DDs' books I could find. She is two years old. Out of 59 books:
In 3, the characters have no discernible sex.
11 have majority female characters
10 equal number male and female
35 have majority male characters, including two with female protagonists:
What the ladybird heard (thieves, farmer, police all male)
The Detective Dog (lovely rhyming story featuring heroine Nell- all other named characters are male)
Some of the books have been shifted along one category- from majority male to equal numbers, or equal to majority female- by the presence of an unnamed mother character. Mothers are more common than fathers, but tend to be passive characters who only appear at the start waving the protagonist off on their journey, or the goal to be sought by the protagonist (usually male) in those lost-animal-child stories. Fathers are less common but a more active part of the story eg Can't you sleep little bear? and The Bears In the Bed and the Great Big Storm- Bear (not Mr Bear- just "Bear") is the main character in the latter but it had to go in the equal pile due to the presence of Mrs Bear...who only exists as Mrs MaleCharacter basically.

I might have to hide some of the books and seek out majority-female books to redress the balance. Except "Wilbie's Gift". That's not going to be hidden. It's going to burn.

There's always The Paperbag Princess:

"Elizabeth, you are a mess. You smell like ashes, your hair is all tangled and you are wearing a dirty old paper bag. Come back when you are dressed like a real princess."

"Ronald," said Elizabeth, "your clothes are very pretty and your hair is very neat. You look like a real prince, but you are a bum."

They didn't get married after all.

Putting in a solid recommendation for Goodnight, Me. by Andrew Daddo. A bedtime favourite of DS2. A lovely story of a baby orangutan who as they settle down to sleep, thank and say goodnight to their body parts. It's almost effectively a guided meditation to help children self settle.

Don't be deceived by the fact, that the reviews/descriptions refers to the orangutan as he, perhaps it's because there's no pretty hair bow to distinguish (insert eye roll). Because throughout the book the orangutan calls themselves me and at the end calls the parent/caregiver you.

On a lighter note, said DS2 is now 14 and like a lot of teenagers "bedtime" is a thing of the past. I'm thinking a subtle manipulation by hacking his computer and getting this story to come out of his speakers. Could save a lot of grief trying to get him out of bed on school mornings.

Shirley Hughes books are gorgeous and are centered around Katie. No big adventure, just a little girl doing lots of fun things. Riding the bus, jumping on cushions, playing in the park with friends.

The Bear Report - Sophie is whisked off to artic to visit polar bears

The Dreaming Tree - Erica campaigns to save a cherry tree from being pulled down.

Mopoke - genderless bird and lots of puns

Gracie the lighthouse cat - a cat goes looking for her kitten in a lighthouse whilst the keepers daughter is rescuing people who have been shipwrecked.

The last one sounds like it is based on Grace Darling. Ace.

nellodee was coming on to say the paper bag princess...my daughter loves that!
I can’t believe people are saying the tiger who came to tea...total reinforcement of gender stereotypes, complete with Sophie and Mummy having to explain to a clearly pissed off daddy why his dinner isn’t ready on the table when he comes home from work. I quite often switch around mummy for daddy on that story and it goes down well.

Monkey Puzzle is very sweet. Room on the Broom is one of my all time favourites. Dear Bunny.

Mog and Meg books go down well with both genders in my house.
For really feminist stuff:

• princess smarty pants
• piggybook

Commotion in the Ocean and Rumble in the Jungle.

Lots of good recommendations here. Love Rosie Revere and Ada Twist. Also the Mog books and Meg and Mog. Snail and the Whale is awesome. There's also a series called Tara Binns (like a female Mr Benn) which is great.

I also do the thing where I change the sexes of animals in stories. That's getting harder now that dd can read. She was horrified to discover all of the animals in Dear Zoo were 'he', but it started a conversation about how silly it was when half the world is girls.

I'm not personally a fan of the 'feisty princess' type books. They seem to rely on the children being very familiar with the traditional princess trope and expect the reader to be impressed simply by the fact a princess doesn't want to get married. I've tried my damnedest that dd doesn't know that trope so these books don't really mean much to her.

Are Little Princess books still around? I got one for DS's potty training without even really thinking it was a girl in the book.

I had a friend texting me today furious at having discovered that Artemis Fowl is a boy.......

dd had the book they are talking about at the end of that otherwise excellent clip...it has lots of women and girls who have done incredible things, and then ..one boy, a very small boy , whose only claim to fame is having parents insane enough to bully all the girls in his school into having him use their loos. So depressing. My dd wrote AND ONE HORRIBLE BOY over his face in felt tip pen...

Rosie's Hat by Julia Donaldson - one of my 18mo DS's favourites (and mine too!)

I think the Rebel Girl book is brilliant. But how are we going to get boys to read it too? We need boys to be reading stories with girl protagonists too.

Zog and the Flying Doctors is well intentioned but it annoys me that Princess Pearl is obviously meant to be a GP whilst Sir Gadabout is a Surgeon. Plus the whole premise of the book is her getting captured by a man and winning him over into setting her free by being kind to him. I think it misses the mark personally.

I borrowed a book called "Rosa and her scooter" from the library earlier. Rosa rides her scooter, gets muddy, fixes it herself when it breaks etc. There are more in the serious about Rosa playing with dinosaurs, trucks etc, that kind of thing, and a boys version called "all about Clive"

May be some books on here that fit the bill also:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3546739-Biosex-affirmative-childrens-books

I can't believe I'm about to say this as I hate her but DD2 loves Peppa pig and it is definitely all about her. She has about 20 books so far.
I love the Charlie and Lola books and Lola is definitely the lead.
Also love Julia Donaldson's The Ugly 5 about animal mothers.

I’ve read The Snail and the Whale loads and I’ve never thought of the snail with a sex at all!

I’m genuinely interested in the evidence to suggest it’s a girl? I don’t doubt I’ve missed something subtle somewhere!

Right at the start it says:

^And as she gazed she sniffed and sighed,
"The sea is deep and the world is wide"^

Personally, I want to see a reprint of this book where every page starts with the snail reminding the reader to use their correct pronouns...

I love The Paper Dolls by Julia Donaldson, as well as The Snail and the Whale.

Like MrsTerry, I change the pronouns. I have three daughters and they're very quick to point out when there aren't enough females in books, tv and film.