Children’s books

[PinkSocks89]

I post very infrequently but would like some help please. I went though my little girls books (brought by others) and to my horror most were completely male charcters. Even worse those with female characters were in an apron, following the male around etc.
Please can someone advise me on any children’s books with strong female characters. If this isn’t the right place to post please point me in the right direction!

What age is your daughter? It might help people when thinking what books would be suitable.

How old is your daughter?

We have a book called The Night Pirates, where the pirates are girls. People often recommend Pippi Longstockings although I haven't read it myself.

I really like "There's a dragon in your book" it's by Tom someone from McFly. Rather than making a point of a strong female lead, the dragon just is female. When reading it you realise just how often we assume characters/ creatures/ animals are male. Eg. "Look at that snail isn't he slimy."

Age would help! 'Emily Brown' by Cressida Cowell are great. Shirley Hughes' books have some great girl characters.

This site is good, though pretty heavily US weighted.

www.amightygirl.com/books

Pippi Longstocking is brilliant, btw. Hilarious (if you're under 10).

Some good titles listed here under gender roles and sexism I think:

www.letterboxlibrary.com/index.html

Poppy and the stupid wolf is good. My son loves the books. The author wrote it for her daughter to encourage her to not be afraid of the big bad wolf.

Paper bag princess.

Zog.

Poppy? My eyesight! Polly!

Second Paper bag Princess, I love it, the kids love it.

Black Rock is another great one

Rosie Revere Engineer is good, plus the others in the series.

My dd loves Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls

Isabel Sanchez has a book about Marie Curie that my dd (and son) love. There are also other ones we got about Rosa Parks, Amelia Earheart etc

A little bit older and I don’t know if they are still made, but the Marmalade books are very funny.

She’s only 3 months but I want to start building up a good bank of books. Any picture book suggestions would be great! Although anything beyond that I would also find interesting! Thanks for all of the suggestions so far!

I really like "There's a dragon in your book" it's by Tom someone from McFly

Tom Fletcher, who seems to be a prolific children's author with girl heroines.

I don't know where you are based OP but unless things have changed terribly in the 29 years since I had a baby it's not what I remember. Many picture books featured animals. Martin Waddell's Farmer Duck and Big Bear and Little Bear for example are beautiful but the sex of the animals isn't specified other than in Owl Mother.

The Worst Princess is great. My daughter loves how kick ass she is.

I found many of the books using animals (not all) the pronoun ‘he’ is used and they then use an apron/ pink bow to represent if an animal is a girl 🙄
Some great suggestions and thanks for the website link too! I’m adding them to my amazon basket!

Before they can read, I just swap he for she if it's an animal, or if the sex of the animal isn't specified.

Ideally what you want is books where there are just lots of female characters, not all these ones that make a big fuss about having female characters.

I got The Worst Princess, and she is great but it still includes a whole lot of implicit sexism. For example, the King & Queen want a baby boy, and then when they have a girl, they say 'Nevermind, she can marry a prince' Or something like that.

I worry that those implicit bits of sexism can have just as much impact as the explicit message that girls can fight dragons. So do look beyond the headlines of the book if you really want to be careful.

Princess Daisy & the Nincompoop Knights is pretty good.

As for whether things have changed, there is certainly a huge sex imbalance in children's books:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/21/childrens-books-sexism-monster-in-your-kids-book-is-male?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

From memory the Martin Waddell books didn't use pronouns at all. The prose is very simple so repeating the names didn't sound odd.

I got The Worst Princess, and she is great but it still includes a whole lot of implicit sexism. For example, the King & Queen want a baby boy, and then when they have a girl, they say 'Nevermind, she can marry a prince' Or something like that.

I can’t remember that bit, which isn’t to say it’s not in there but I do read it a lot right now and it doesn’t ring a bell. But my daughter’s view, who is 8 so very able to articulate her response, is that Princess Sue sticks two fingers up at all expected limitations to great effect. The story is how she overturns the stereotype so you have to include that in the beginning?

Also we do love the Night Pirates and Clever Polly. I’m going to trawl our shelves for inspiration tomorrow.