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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

TheTurbulent Term of Tyke Tyler

71 replies

JellySaurus · 27/02/2023 17:17

Does anybody remember this book from the 70s or early 80s? Tyke is a schoolkid who keeps getting into trouble. Danny has learning difficulties and is Tyke's friend. There is no indication whether Tyke is a girl or a boy. To my recollection boy readers always assumed that Tyke was a a boy, whereas girl readers were about equally divided into boy/girl/not sure, depending on how tomboyish they were. You find out towards the end of the book.

It's due a resurgence, I think.

OP posts:
StLevanBlackcaps · 27/02/2023 19:40

I loved this! My very feminist auntie bought it for me, I don’t know whether she knew the twist but it really surprised me when I got to the last line - ‘Theodora Tyler get down from there, you naughty disobedient girl’ 😮

We then read it in class and I had to keep quiet so as not to spoil it for everyone else!

DameMaud · 27/02/2023 19:53

I love this book. Still got a copy!

Rosebaywillow · 27/02/2023 20:04

As a retired English teacher it is such a pleasure to see how great books like TTToTT stick with us and make us think.
Also it worries me that censorship and ideology can influence young, innocent minds and inculcate bizarre and harmful ideas.

JellySaurus · 27/02/2023 20:12

By the time I came across it I was already an adult, but I loved it and wished I had read it at a much younger age. As an adult, Tyke's relationship with Danny caught my attention much more than Tkye's constantly being scapegoated. But I loved loved loved the revelation that Tyke was a girl, and oh so wished I had read the book when I was 10-11-12, climbing trees and drain pipes, and doing all sorts of other un-feminine things.

I think it would be good read to Y4, and for Y5,6,7 to read for themselves. (And for everybody older, too, of course!)

OP posts:
SerafinasGoose · 27/02/2023 20:17

AND you can do all those things and still be a girl, unlike poor George from the Famous Five!

Tyke is a great, great character - and her little dog Crumble. The word-salad headmaster and his convoluted sentences with polysyllabic words, plus his nasty little plant that he keeps watering, also makes me laugh.

missingthewinchesterboys · 27/02/2023 20:26

100% Tyke was a girl!
I had the book on tape and remember here in referee to as she

KingscoteStaff · 27/02/2023 21:16

Very popular in my Year 6 book corner - with both boys and girls!

duvet · 27/02/2023 21:16

Yes remember reading it in year 7 and the twist at the end. It's funny I thought about this book the other when someone posted about some other questionable book their child was reading in school!

LadyPeterWimsey · 27/02/2023 21:25

I loved this book, and made all my children read it. It was so wonderful watching them read the last chapter, and then, mouths agape, flick back through the book to see if they had missed anything.

pollyhemlock · 27/02/2023 21:41

Here is my 1979 edition with Tyke on the roof about to ring the bell

TheTurbulent Term of Tyke Tyler
averylongtimeago · 27/02/2023 22:39

I read Gene Kemp's books to my dc in the '80s.
We all loved them.

Puddycatfan · 27/02/2023 22:42

I remember that book! We studied it in English in the early 80's. Some great discussions

pontefractals · 27/02/2023 22:43

Thank you for reminding me of this book, whixh I alai loved about 35 years ago! I am going to hunt down a copy for my 12-year-old niece, who thinks she might be a boy...

SinnerBoy · 27/02/2023 23:32

My daughter 9 YO, Year 5 hasn't heard of it. Yet.

TheBiologyStupid · 28/02/2023 01:02

Inevitability, it has its own Wikipedia article: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turbulent_Term_of_Tyke_Tiler

EmpressaurusOfCats · 28/02/2023 07:25

TheBiologyStupid · 28/02/2023 01:02

Inevitability, it has its own Wikipedia article: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turbulent_Term_of_Tyke_Tiler

Which both gives the end away and talks a lot of bollocks about gender. Naturally.

unclebuck · 28/02/2023 07:27

I loved it, DS read it, never assumed Tyke was a girl so thought the twist was crap and it was boring. Them he was made to do it as a class reader and moaned. Then it came up as his 11plus reading comprehension, he wss LIVID 😂

Strongboat · 28/02/2023 18:05

I loved it. I was a 70s child and thought she was a girl from the beginning; didn't realise until now it was supposed to be a twist.

quinceh · 28/02/2023 18:26

I remember it well, and thought Tyke was a girl all along!

AmuseBish · 01/03/2023 11:03

I remember seeing it in school and not particularly wanting to read it because I assumed it was a boy, BUT I think this might have been due to a TV show called 'Tim Tyler, the boy who lost his laugh' that was on at the same time and I possible confused them.

morningtoncrescent62 · 01/03/2023 13:09

Oh, it's a brilliant book. My DDs loved it. It was written in the 1970s, I think, and it was very much how I remembered primary school at that time. There's a wonderful description of Tyke lovingly making her dodecahedron in Maths classes, in the halcyon pre-national-curriculum days. The point of the book, I think, is that Tyke is never given any pronoun, and children assume that she's a boy. Her friend, Danny, is a boy with learning difficulties, and the two of them get into mischief but nothing really bad, all very lovable.

DD1's teacher read it to the class in P6 in the late 90s, thankfully just before social media became a thing, and she didn't tell the children that Tyke was a girl, just let them think she was a boy. The big reveal at the end, when the enemy teacher calls out, "Theodora Tiler, you naughty disobedient girl, come down at once" absolutely outraged DD1 and her friends. They thought the teacher was being massively disrespectful to Tyke by calling her a girl. She then talked about it for weeks, about why to call a girl a boy was such a bad thing, and about why she'd assumed Tyke had to be a boy. If I sound like I know the book very well, it's because DD2 became obsessed with it, and I read it loads of times to and with her. Apart from anything else, it's a beautiful book, and captures the pre-teen years so well, even though it's dated.

Thank you, OP, for reminding me of it! It brings back so many memories of my daughters' childhood. I think it would be a great book for discussing gender woo with children.

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