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Pope Francis recently said in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, and on several occasions over the last year, that Western nations are exporting an idea that gender is a choice. Pope Francis asserts that this “gender ideology” is the enemy of the family. Here the pope disappoints many in America and Europe, who hoped that he might free Catholics from the heritage of homophobia and repression of women that has been protected and promoted for millennia by the Roman Catholic Church.

The post Sex, Pope Francis, and empire appeared first on OUPblog.

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My research interests have for more than five decades been directly or obliquely related to the making and administration of laws, especially with regard to women, in colonial and independent India. Indeed, my first series of articles, which appeared in the early 1960s, was on social reform and legislation in 19th century India. A little later, while researching for my doctoral dissertation on early Indian nationalism, I got interested in the Maharaja Libel Case.

The post Law, gender equality, and social justice in India appeared first on OUPblog.

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By Cynthia Leitich Smith
for Cynsations

How "Girl Books" Could Save the World (Or at Least Help Out) by Jen Malone from Nerdy Book Club. Peek: "Guess who’s not being exposed to these main characters? Boys. That’s a problem, because their female counterparts are only too happy to read books featuring male central characters, meaning those girls’ empathy for and understanding of the opposite gender grows, while the reverse isn’t necessarily happening."

Teen Girls Have a Right to Roam, Too by C.J. Flood from The Guardian. Peek: "Was it responsible, I asked my publicist and editor, to show teenage girl friends creeping from their bedrooms after dark, to wander their home turf in the moonlight?"

On Gendered Book Covers and Being a Woman Designer by Jennifer Heuer from Lit Hub. Peek: "What topics are women interested in? All of them. How about that book about sports (and not just one about a female athlete)? History (not just one about suffragettes)? A crime thriller (not just one with “girl” in the title)?"

The Heroine's Journey: How Campbell's Model Doesn't Fit by B.J. Priester from Fangirl. Peek: "Putting too much weight on old myths with antiquated, if not downright misogynistic, attitudes toward women will only reinforce sexist limitations from a sexist time in human history."

Girls Growing Up in Middle Grade Fiction by Yamile Saied Mendez from Project Mayhem. Peek: "...here are some titles that have used this time in a girls life as an opportunity to create memorable characters and premises."

The Problem with Female Protagonists by Jo Eberhardt from Writer Unboxed. Peek: "I took my son by the hand and went to find out whether his assertion that we mostly (because “always” was clearly an exaggeration) read about female protagonists was true." See How I've Helped Teach Boys That Girls Are Boring an Unimportant by Kasey Edwards from Daily Life.

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By Cynthia Leitich Smith
for Cynsations

Over the summer, the children's-YA book community has continued discussing diversity, decolonization, authenticity and representation both throughout the body of literature and the industry. Here are highlights; look for more in quickly upcoming, additional update posts.

Mirrors? Windows? How about Prisms? from Uma Krishnaswami. Peek: "...cultural content in children’s books needs to be woven into the story so the authors intention is not stamped all over it." See also Uma on Tolstoy Was Not Writing for Me.

Twelve Fundamentals of Writing The "Other" and The Self by Daniel Jose Older from Buzzfeed Books. Peek: "Every character has a relationship to power. This includes institutional, interpersonal, historical, cultural. It plays out in the micro-aggressions and hate crimes, sex, body image, life-changing decisions, everyday annoyances and the depth of historical community trauma."

Diversity in Book Publishing Isn't Just About Writers -- Marketing Matters, Too by Jean Ho from NPR. Peek: "For past projects, she has researched segmented audiences ranging from retired African-American women's books clubs, South Asian soccer organizations, Trinidadian-interest media outlets both stateside and abroad, to extracurricular programs geared toward South Bronx teens."

Looking Back: Diversity in Board Books by Joanna Marple from We Need Diverse Books. Peek: "...that children as young as six months can judge others by the color of their skin. Even if a caregiver never mentions race, children may well use skin color on their own, along with other differences, to judge themselves and others."

Drilling Down on Diversity in Picture Books from CCBlogC. Peek: "We’re keeping track of the things people want to know. Just how many picture books have animal, rather than human, characters? How many books about African American characters are historical? How many feature LGBTQ families? Or Muslims? Or people with disabilities? How many are by first-time authors or illustrators?"

Children's Books and the Color of Characters by Kwame Alexander from The New York Times. Peek: "They all believe I am writing about them. Why is this so much harder for the grown-ups? Is race the only lens through which we can read the world?"

On White Fragility in Young Adult Literature by Justine Larbalestier from Reading While White. Peek: "...we white authors can support Indigenous authors and Authors of Color by reading their books, recommending their books, blurbing their books, and recommending them to our agents. When we're invited to conferences, or festivals, or to be in anthologies, make sure they're not majority white."

When Defending Your Writing Becomes Defending Yourself by Matthew Salesses from NPR. Peek: "Here is a not uncommon experience. Writer Emily X.R. Pan was told by the white writers in her workshop that the racism in her story could never happen — though every incident had happened to her."

There Is No Secret to Writing About People Who Don't Look Like You: The Importance of Empathy as Craft by Brandon Taylor from LitHub. Peek: "The best writing, the writing most alive with possibilities, is the writing that at once familiarizes and estranges; it’s writing that divorces us from our same-old contexts and shifts our thinking about ourselves and the world around us."

How Canada Publishes So Much Diverse Children's Literature by Ken Setterington from School Library Journal. Peek: "Considering that the entire Canadian market is about the size of the market in California alone (roughly 36 million), publishers must rely on sales outside of the country."

Biracial, Bicultural Roundtable (Part One, Part Two) by Cynthia Leitich Smith from We Need Diverse Books. Peek: "According to a 2015 Pew study, 6.9 percent of the U.S. population is biracial. According to the 2010 Census, between 2000 and 2010, the number of people identifying themselves with more than one race rose from 6.8 million to 9 million."

Cynsational Screening Room



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• Anti-Native Racism in Pop Culture 
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• Kansas City Authors Recommend Diverse Children's Books
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• Sidekick No More: Writing Asian Superheroes and the Challenges of Representation

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In an effort to address misconceptions about gender and location in relation to academic publishing in Africa, the editors of African Affairs reached out to Ryan C. Briggs and Scott Weathers to discuss the findings from their recent research in more detail.

The post Gender and location in African politics scholarship: Q&A with Ryan C. Briggs and Scott Weathers appeared first on OUPblog.

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File this one under the category: Stuff Parents Notice But Don’t Discuss

You have a child.  The child is quite young, let’s say two years of age. The child loves books about tools, ladders, and banjos (and you would be shocked just how many books for kids contain at east one of those three items).  What the child loves most in this great big, wide, wonderful world, though, is construction equipment.  Excavators and backhoes (don’t call them diggers).  Cement mixers and forklifts.  And so you, good dutiful parent that you are, go off and attempt to find as many construction equipment books as possible so as to feed this insatiable need.

Time passes.  The child is very fond of the books you have chosen.  So fond, in fact, that they’ve taken to having you read them over and over and over again in succession.  And the adult brain, while capable of doing this, begins to realize that the information coming in is the exact same information that came in five and ten and fifteen minutes ago.  So the brain begins to search for meanings in the books.  Connections.  Something, anything really, to keep it occupied.  And that’s when you notice it.  Right there.  Clear as crystal.

The genders of various pieces of construction equipment.

Because, you see, you cannot check out endless books on crane trucks and steam rollers before you notice how these books choose to gender their anthropomorphized mechanicals.

Today, ladies and gentlemen, we pick apart precisely why one book or another chooses to make a wrecking ball a boy or a grader a girl.  Bear with me here.  I’ve read a LOT of these books.  I need to do something with this information or I may burst.

But first, some history!

History Time

Go to your shelves and pick yourselves up a copy of Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever.  A staple of the toddler set, and a fixture on living room bookshelves since the year of its publication, 1963.

Now if you’ll take out your copy of Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature and turn to page 69 you will find a remarkably well-written passage (*puffs self up*) regarding Mr. Scarry and gender in his books.  It reads, “By the 1970s, author/illustrator Richard Scarry was the object of much feminist criticism for his repeated portrayal of female characters in passive domestic roles in his many picture books showing community workers.  But Scarry eventually heeded the cries of sexism aimed at him.”  He updated the characters in his book.  Back in 2013 I wrote a piece called “Are there any girl bears?”: Gender and the 21st Century Picture Book featuring this fun bit of side-by-side comparison between the original Word Book and its revised edition:

Of course, once you know about the update, the changes are shockingly obvious. Scarry didn’t really bother to match the linework when he redid his art.  Or maybe it’s just that the printing technology of the day made for a stark difference in the original and updated characters.  Here are two good examples of what I mean:

As you can see, the original images are using these deeper watercolor shades while the new images are much lighter and simpler.  I do, however, have to give the man credit for the taxi driver in pearls.

And you know what?  I don’t care if the female characters do look Photoshopped in.  I’m grateful, dammit, that there are some women doing labor above and beyond secretarial work.  Scarry even occasionally put men in roles traditionally considered to be the women’s territory.  Mr. Bunny makes breakfast for the family, for example.

Which brings us, naturally, to the present day.  In the 1970s there was a big push for diverse books and titles with gender equal characters.  Time passed and this pressing need became just a bit less pressing.  So let’s take a group of construction equipment titles as an example and see how the ladies fare.  After all, if Scarry updated this bear to look like this:

then how hard can it be for books today?

I’ll separate these books into two categories.  The first are anthropomorphized vehicles.  The second, construction workers.  This is by no means a complete listing.  It’s just what I’ve observed in my own life.

Gendered Construction Equipment

Digger, Dozer, Dumper by Hope Vestergaard, ill. David Slonim

MAN, I love this book.  I recently got a copy for my son to see, having remembered it a little late.  The edition I received from the library was sparkling and pristine.  You know why?  Because it’s shelved in the poetry section of the library and few folks think to look there for their construction books.  Now I love the way Vestergaard never cheats on a rhyme, that’s true.  But really and truly what I adore about the book is the variety of genders she grants her unusually animate objects.  The skid-steer loader, excavator, ambulance, steamroller, and forklift all identify as female.

Slonim does give big long eyelashes to all the female vehicles, which seems a bit excessive.  You don’t need eyelashes on a Skid-Steer Loader, after all.  But as it happens, eyelashes are the preferred method of gender identification on trucks.  You can see this as well in:

Go! Go! Go! Stop! by Charise Mericle Harper

In this book there’s only one female piece of equipment and it’s the dump truck.

Not quite as extensive as Vestergaard’s book, but it’s still good to have her there.  Again, Harper goes in for eyelashes.  Scarry used bows.  It’s all relative.

Mighty Dads by Joan Holub, ill. James Dean

An interesting case.  Dean doesn’t go in for eyelashes and Holub seemingly gives some of the little construction vehicles female names (“Mitzy” is one of them).  It’s not 100% clear, but you can read into it what you like.  I think it counts.

Goodnight Goodnight Construction Site by Sherry Duskey Rinker, ill. Tom Lichtenheld

Ah.  Alas.  My son adores this book.  He recently got a stuffed version of the excavator for his birthday and he simply could not be more pleased.  But while the pieces of equipment do have genders, they’re all male.

Bulldozer’s Big Day by Candace Fleming, ill. Eric Rohmann

All boy, all the time too.

Gender of Construction Workers

I’ll be the first to tell you that of all the construction workers who have been helping to build the duplex next door to my house, not one of them has been female.  Still and all, there is a benefit to young readers seeing girls build in some way.  So with that in mind . . .

Dig, Dogs, Dig: A Construction Tail by James Horvath (and subsequent sequels like Build, Dogs, Build and Work, Dogs, Work)

I’m writing this at a bit of a disadvantage.  I’ve seeing Dig and Build but I haven’t seen Work quite yet.  Still, on the basis of the first two books in the series, I have one comment: Roxie needs to do some real work.  You see, in the book there’s this pink dog named Roxie who joins the apparently all-male crew on their digs (yes, she has eyelashes).  The problem is that Roxie doesn’t have much to do. For example, on the back of Build, Dogs, Build you can see her welding:

But inside they changed it so that the dog doing the welding wasn’t her.  All Roxie got to really do in this book was install a doorbell.  Dig, Dogs, Dig wasn’t much better.  There she just handed down hammers.  I’ll be looking at Work, Dogs, Work soon.  Hopefully they put that gal through her paces.  She needs to earn her keep!

Construction by Sally Sutton

Very nicely done.  It’s not overt but the construction workers do include female crew members.

Whose Trucks? by Toni Buzzeo, ill. Jim Datz

These board books are fantastic.  Men and women work together everywhere.  Also, the kids playing with the trucks at the end of the book are a boy and a girl.  If you haven’t seen this, as well as its companion piece Whose Tools? then you are missing out, my friend.

Diggers Go by Steve Light

      

My son doesn’t have many words but one word he does have is “man”.  “Man?  Man?” he asks as he points to the construction equipment in this book.  He’s not wrong.  You might argue that since the faces are in silhouette there’s no way to really tell if the drivers are men or women, and you’d be right.  Still and all they look like dudes.  When Light puts women in these positions, they tend to have ponytails.  The sole ding in what is otherwise a magnificent series.

 

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Visit Heather Lang's official author site & @Hblang

By Helen Kampion
for Cynthia Leitich Smith's Cynsations

Congratulations on your new picture book biography Fearless Flyer: Ruth Law and Her Flying Machine (Calkins Creek, 2016) and the starred reviews from Booklist and School Library Journal! 

I was captivated by your account of Ruth Law’s record-breaking flight from Chicago to New York City one hundred years ago, and Raúl Colón’s illustrations are magnificent.

You are creating a wonderful collection of books about strong women from our past. How do you choose the women you write about?

I love to read and write about lesser-known women, who dream big, pick themselves up when they fall, and stay persistent.

These women might face poverty, racial or gender discrimination, disability, or other hardships. They’re not afraid of failure. They inspire me to step outside my own comfort zone and be brave.

What drew you to this story about Ruth Law?

Sometimes I’m drawn to writing about topics I fear. With fear, there’s always fascination—like when you don’t want to watch a scary movie, but you can’t help yourself.

I’m a nervous flyer, so I’ve always been intrigued by those who dared to fly the flimsy biplanes made in the early 1900s. Ruth Law opened doors for women aviators like Amelia Earhart to enter this male-dominated field.

I loved how Ruth immersed herself fully in flying, even mastering the mechanics of her plane. She could tell what was wrong with her motor by the sound of it!

Her passion and personality came through in her words—she had a lovely voice. I wove her words into the text, so Ruth helps tell her own story.

It’s clear a lot of research went into Fearless Flyer. Can you talk a little about your process? 

Every book I write is a treasure hunt. I never know where a clue might take me. My initial research involved reading a lot of newspaper articles, and in one of those articles Ruth mentioned she kept a scrapbook. I tracked it down at the National Air and Space Museum archives.

Heather researching Ruth Law's scrapbook

Her enormous scrapbook was stuffed with newspaper articles, mementos, photos, and her own handwriting. It was a goldmine.

While I was there I visited the early flight exhibit at the museum, educated myself about her biplane, and learned about the evolution of flight. A lot of questions popped up about her plane and how she operated it, so I found a retired Navy Commander who pilots and builds these old-style biplanes. He had incredible insights.

I also consulted with the folks at the Glen H. Curtiss Museum and the National Air and Space Museum.

I am always amazed how generous people are with their time and how eager they are to help.

What is one of your favorite things about writing for children?

Other than being able to wear sweat pants or pajamas all day, I’d have to say one of my favorite things about my job is the community. I can’t imagine a more supportive group of people than writers, teachers, and librarians. We all have the same primary goal—to have a positive impact on children, giving them books they can relate to and books that open them up to new people and places and dreams.

From Heather's The Original Cowgirl, illustrated by Suzanne Beaky (Whitman)

I’m in two critique groups. We share the highs of clever endings, successful revisions, and accepted submissions. We share the struggles of faulty plots, poor reviews, and rejection. I rely on them tremendously for support.

What are you working on now?

with Alice Coachman

I’m launching a blog focusing on Girls With Grit and having a blast creating the content.

It will include real-life stories, psychology and science, classroom activities, interviews with authors, and of course children’s books with strong female characters.

I’m also adding supplemental materials to my website so readers can get to know even more about Ruth Law and her flying machine.

What do you have coming out next?

I’m really excited about my next picture book biography, Swimming with Sharks: The Daring Discoveries of Eugenie Clark, illustrated by Jordi Solano (Albert Whitman, 2016), about an amazing shark scientist AKA “The Shark Lady.”

Sadly, Genie (as she liked to be called) died last year at the age of 92. I had the thrill of interviewing her in person in 2014, and hearing about her remarkable adventures. Genie also reviewed the manuscript for me.

I look forward to sharing this amazing woman with kids everywhere.

Cynsational Notes

Helen's muses

Helen Kampion is a graduate of the MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College. She writes both fiction and non-fiction for young readers, including middle-grade novels and picture book biographies.

Her picture book manuscripts have been recognized by The Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing sponsored by Hunger Mountain ("Paddy Cats," Special Mention, 2015) and by the National Association of Elementary School Principals ("Francesca’s Funky Footwear," Finalist, 2013).

When she’s not at her desk busy writing you can find her helping fellow authors with marketing events, volunteering at the New England SCBWI conference, or teaching creative writing workshops for children. Helen also serves on the on the Board of the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance. Find her on Twitter @helenkampion.

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Whether he fills his scenes with raunchy innuendos, or boldly writes erotic poetry, or frequently reverses the gender norms of the time period, Shakespeare addresses the multifaceted ways in which sex, love, marriage, relationships, gender, and sexuality play an integral part of human life.

The post Sex, love, and Shakespeare [slideshow] appeared first on OUPblog.

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There’s been a lot of talk lately about what pronouns to use for persons whose gender is unknown, complicated, or irrelevant. Options include singular they and invented, common-gender pronouns. Each has its defenders and its critics.

The post Gender politics of the generic “he” appeared first on OUPblog.

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Title: What We Left Behind Author: Robin Talley Publisher: Harlequin Teen, 2015 Themes: Gender, binary identity, lesbianism, transgender, genderqueer, pronouns, starting college, relationships, romance Genre: Contemporary YA/NA Ages: 14+ Source: ARC received from publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. (Quotes from the ARC therefor subject to change.) Opening: October           … Continue reading →

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Gender is a central concept in modern societies. The promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment is key for policymakers, and it is receiving a growing attention in business agendas. However, gender gaps are still a wide phenomenon. While gender gaps in education and health have been decreasing remarkably over time and their differences across countries have been narrowing, gender gaps in the labour market and in politics are more persistent and still vary largely across countries.

The post Ten facts about economic gender inequality appeared first on OUPblog.

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One of the most uncompromising, unflinching, page-turning books I have read in a long time. It is a harrowing story that forces you to confront and challenge many important issues; gender, poverty, race and class to list but a few. Mireille is visiting her Haitian parents in Port-au-Prince with her American husband and baby son […]

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Wrapping up 2014, the EU year of Workplace Reinvention, once again brings worklife balance (WLB) policies into focus. These policies, including parental leave, rights to reduced hours, and flexible work hours, are now part of European law and national laws inside and outside of Europe. For example, Japan has similar WLB policies in place.

The existence of these rights does not always, however, reflect the capabilities of individuals to claim them without risk to their careers, and even job loss, particularly when so many companies are downsizing. There is a gap between policies and practices, and, more broadly, a widening gap between aspirations for worklife balance—for more time for family, friends, and leisure activities—and the pressures for greater productivity and increased work intensity, alongside the growing numbers of insecure and precarious jobs. For men, this gap has become more tangible due to changing norms and expectations for them to be more involved fathers and the persistence of gendered norms around caring and earning in the workplace. Research, including the European Social Survey 2010, reveals that when looking for a job the overwhelming majority of men (as well as women), place a high priority on reconciling employment with family. They also show that majority of working fathers would choose to work less hours even if it meant a corresponding loss in hourly pay. Still, between 40-60% of them in European countries are working more than 40 hours a week (European Social Survey in 2010).

Firm and work organizational culture has become the central focus in worklife balance research, with a particular focus on increasing flexibility (flexi-times and flex workplaces) and telecommuting. Flexible working times, once a perk for the valuable worker, have been embraced by many firms as the hallmark of new management and work organization. It is a cornerstone in EU policy and discourse on WLB. In June, the UK granted all employees the right to request flex time. Flexibility is presented as the win-win situation for achieving WLB, allowing for changes over the life course as well as individual preferences.

But does flexibility actually increase one’s scope of alternatives and choice in worklife balance? This depends on the job/sector, the skill and education of the worker; gender matters, as do national statutory provisions and the practices at firms. Consider the following example. Flexibility in working times and especially the possibility to reduce hours has enabled many mothers to combine employment with family, but there are career penalties since part-time jobs tend to be considered “dead end jobs”. Can one adjust working times over the life course? The European Survey on Working Times (firm level data) show that only 18% of firms offer full reversibility (the possibility to move from part-time to full-time and from full-time to part-time).

Within the current debates on worklife balance and flexibility we see two cross-currents. On the one side, there are switch-off policy initiatives in France, which seek to set limits on the number of hours that an employee can be “linked-in” (accessing work systems and emails). In Germany, the Westphalia region is considering banning office communications in the evenings and during vacations, a practice that has already been established by VW, BMW, and Deutsche Telekom, which banned after-hours calls and emails to workers. On the other side, the solution to WLB is cast in terms of total flexibility with employees setting the pace of work and schedules and telecommuting rather than traveling to work. Work becomes an activity, not a place; rewards are based on performance and results, not on the hours you put in at the workplace. In this vision of future work, the workplace would become superfluous and employment conditional on evaluated performance. Is this a workers’ utopia that would enhance the capabilities of individuals for a better WLB and quality of life? Or is this a scenario with high levels of uncertainty, longer working days, the removal of boundaries between working life and other spheres of life, and lastly, the loss of community among workers who interact at the workplace?

Headline image: Seconds Out by dogwelder. CC BY-NC 2.0 via flickr

The post Making choices between policies and real lives appeared first on OUPblog.

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A ‘slobbering valentine to a member of the upper classes’, ‘an orgy of snobbery’, and ‘the apotheosis of brown-nosing’: Angela Carter’s excoriating dismissal of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928), delivered in Tom Paulin’s notorious televisual polemic, J’accuse Virginia Woolf (1991), serves as a reminder that this work has as much potential as any of her novels to provoke heated disagreements. That it should be so might seem surprising, as it is one of the most easy-going of her novels, one in which she consciously simplified her prose style in the interests of drawing in the reader effortlessly; it is also the most comic of her novels, mocking the conventions of history and biography. That Carter in particular should be so violently opposed to the novel is particularly surprising, as its willingness to rewrite conventional fictional forms anticipates her novels, and its employment of fantastic elements anticipates the ‘magic realist’ mode that she was to employ. Like Orlando, Carter’s own The Passion of New Eve (1977) also centres on a change of sex, albeit more violently wrought. Mostly intriguingly of all, in 1979 Glyndebourne Opera House commissioned Carter to write a libretto for an opera, never completed, of Woolf’s novel. Carter’s dismissal of Woolf might appear to stem from unease about working in her shadow.

To leave it there would neglect the prominence of social class in Carter’s opinion. Though the fragments of her libretto were published under the title Orlando: or, The Enigma of the Sexes, another working title was Orlando: An English Country House Opera; the country house and the aristocracy are significant factors in Orlando. Woolf’s novel was inspired by her passionate relationship with Vita Sackville-West in 1925 and 1926. Vita had been brought up at Knole in Kent, her family’s ancestral seat since the early seventeenth century; she loved the house and its history, but as a woman, she did not stand to inherit it. Vita’s family history made a strong impression on Woolf: ‘All these ancestors & centuries, & silver & gold, have bred a perfect body’, she wrote in 1924, with a hint of critical awareness of Vita’s privilege; in the same diary entry she noted how Knole could house all the poor of Judd Street, then one of the slum areas of Bloomsbury. In 1927 she was more overawed, more deeply in love, and less critical: walking round Knole with Vita, ‘All the centuries seemed lit up, the past expressive, articulate; not dumb & forgotten; but a crowd of people stood behind, not dead at all; not remarkable; fair faced, long limbed; affable; & so we reach the days of Elizabeth quite easily.’ Politically Woolf was liberal, progressive, and above all anti-authoritarian; by the 1930s she was actively involved in her local Labour Party. Visiting Knole in 1927, however, she seems to have been enchanted by a conservative ideology in which the country house serves as symbol of continuity between generations, of the centrality of monarchy to the British constitution, and of a benign relation between the aristocracy and the people. It is ‘ideological’ in the sense of masking and normalizing exploitative economic relations.

The strength of Carter’s hostility in 1991 may well have something to do with the revival of the country house ideology in British mass culture in the 1980s. ITV’s adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, in the depths of the economic recession of the early 1980s, was a particularly pointed example. Critical works such as Patrick Wright’s On Living in an Old Country (1985) and Robert Hewison’s The Heritage Industry (1987) highlighted the ways in which ‘heritage’ serves political ends. However, Carter’s remarks don’t tell the whole truth, no matter how much they resonated in their moment. Important though the country house is to Orlando, it is less important than poetry and the hero/heroine’s dogged pursuit of the muse, and poetry in turn is less important than the question of personal identity. House-building and poetry-writing stand in direct contrast to each other. In Chapter II, it is the scorn of the poet Nick Greene that makes Orlando turn to the refurbishment of his house; though when the work is complete he holds banquets there, when the banquets are at their height he retreats to his private room to enjoy the pleasures of poetry. When Orlando travels to Turkey, his/her English values are put into perspective. To the Turkish gipsies, a family lineage four or five hundred years is of negligible duration, and the desire to own a house with hundreds of bedrooms is vulgar. Viewed from a certain angle, the established aristocrat becomes a vulgar upstart. Although the house still matters to Orlando when she returns to it triumphantly in the final chapter, and although the house still holds vivid memories of the people she has known, the cause of the triumph is the recognition of Orlando’s writing; and she recalls the sceptical perspective of the gipsies.

Focusing on the relationship between Vita and Virginia, Vita’s son Nigel Nicolson described Orlando as ‘the longest and most charming love-letter in literature’, a phrase that was Carter’s starting point. If Carter’s estimate is distorted by the demands of her time, Nicolson’s isn’t quite right either: Orlando is more than a purely personal document. It raises questions about personal identity and national identity, about history and its transmission, and about the value of writing, and it does so in a way that persistently mocks established values.

Headline image: Knole House, owned by the National Trust (2009). In the early 17th century the Sackville family re-modelled the old archbishops’ palace into a stately home. Photo by John Wilder. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and the country house appeared first on OUPblog.

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A key element of Vladimir Putin’s legitimation strategy has been the cultivation of a macho image. His various public relations stunts subduing wild animals, playing rough sports, and displaying his muscular torso, drew on widely familiar ideas about masculinity. The purpose was to portray Putin as a strong, decisive leader who could be counted upon to solve challenging problems with a convincing mixture of cool levelheadedness and the credible threat to use force as needed. But while masculinity is demonstrated through such displays, it is also reinforced by the sexualized attention of traditionally feminine, attractive young women.

The mobilization of masculinity as a political resource has been visible in Putin’s birthday gifts, as well as in other Putin-oriented cultural productions. While Putin has been receiving elaborate birthday presents almost since the start of his first term as Russian president, this post largely focuses on a handful of gifts in recent years that have come from organized pro-Putin activists and emphasized Putin’s masculinity.

In October 2010, as a gift for Putin’s 58th birthday, twelve female students and alumni of Moscow State University’s prestigious journalism department published a calendar featuring photographs of themselves looking as if they had walked out of a Victoria’s Secret catalog. Offering witty, sexualized quips, each young woman suggested herself as a potential lover for Mr. Putin. “You put the forest fires out, but I’m still burning,” smiled a student illustrating the month of March. In a similar vein, in July 2011 a group called Putin’s Army announced an “I’ll Rip [It] for Putin” contest with a video that got over 2.5 million hits. The clip featured a buxom young woman ripping open her tank top to demonstrate her dedication to Putin. In October, Putin’s Army continued its activity by filming a video for Putin’s fifty-ninth birthday. Promising that their birthday gift would be “the sweetest,” a handful of women wearing only underpants and white button-down shirts were shown baking their idol a chocolate birthday cake (decorated with a heart) while squirting whipped cream into their mouths. An email-hacking incident in 2012 revealed that the Kremlin-sponsored youth group, Nashi, had funded Putin’s Army along with a range of other pro-Putin web projects.

Nor did pro-Kremlin groups let Putin’s 60th birthday pass without a new proclamation of young women’s love for the president. In early October 2012, the United Russia party’s youth wing, Young Guard, produced a video for the occasion featuring attractive young women mimicking a variety of Putin’s manly exploits (flying a fighter jet, playing ice-hockey, and scuba diving for “ancient” pottery). In each setting, the women’s femininity was exaggerated, and most of them were shown receiving a text message from Putin (“The Very One”) while carrying out their feats. The final scene, over the strains of “Blueberry Hill” (which Putin had sung at a celebrity fundraiser two years earlier), showed all the women standing together on a city street, waiting in great anticipation — with a birthday cake — for Putin to arrive. The clip closed with the “Blueberry Hill” lyric ostensibly ringing in each woman’s mind: “My dreams came true.” The video playfully spoofed Putin’s stunts while upholding his image as a highly desirable man from the standpoint of the women who thrilled over his text messages and grew giddy at the prospect of seeing him in person.

If pro-Putin youth groups presented any public gifts to the president in 2013, none attained viral status on the Internet. Putin spent his birthday in Bali that year at the APEC summit, where he was serenaded with “Happy Birthday to You!” by Indonesia’s president. Putin was also the subject of a music video released the previous day, written and performed by a St. Petersburg artist, Aleksei Sergienko, who had made the news a year earlier after showing fifteen portraits of Putin at an exhibit titled “The President. A Kind-Hearted Man.” Sergienko’s song, titled, “Hang in there, man!” (Muzhik, derzhis’!), repeatedly encouraged Putin to “hang in there” as he resolutely confronted challenges ranging from Pussy Riot’s insults to European demands for LGBT rights. “We wish him strength,” explained Sergienko.

In 2014, playful presents from pro-Kremlin youth groups addressing Putin primarily as a manly sex object gave way to birthday offerings with a more grandiose and nationalistic tone. The latest such group, called Network — formed “from the ashes” of Nashi — produced two gifts starkly emphasizing Putin’s achievements as an unshakeable national leader navigating a hostile international environment. The first was an art exhibit, organized for Putin’s 62nd birthday, featuring artistic renderings of “The Twelve Labors of Putin” (modeled after the Twelve Labors of Hercules). Here Putin could be seen shielding Russia from the economic sanctions (rendered as serpents) imposed after Russia’s takeover of Crimea, and beheading the Hydra-head belonging to the US. Network’s second gift was a series of giant patriotic murals emblazoned on walls in seven Russian cities, each illustrating one of Putin’s achievements for Russia: Strength, Remembrance, Arctic, Sovereignty, History, Security, and Olympics — an anagram for the Russian word “Spasibo” (thank you). As Network’s press secretary explained, under Putin, Russia was winning. With Putin in charge, the state, like its leader, was now seen as strong, tough, victorious, and — naturally — manly.

Featured image: Russian president Vladimir Putin by World Economic Forum, photo by Remy Steinegger. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons via Wikimedia Commons.

The post “Happy Birthday, Mr. Putin!”: celebrating political masculinity in Russia appeared first on OUPblog.

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Ancillary Justice
Ann Leckie
science fiction

I am a closet-case sci-fi fan. Or, as multiple book reviews on this blog have probably revealed, maybe not so closet case. I looked forward to reading Ancillary Justice when I'd seen it won the Hugo and Nebula awards. I cut my sci-fi teeth on the likes of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and Frank Herbert's Dune in between installments of Little House on the Prairie. That is the seventies in a nutshell. And I figured, if Leckie could beat Andy Weir's The Martian, which I love, in the awards category, I was about to fall in love again.

Let's just say Ancillary Justice and I got off to a rocky start. It was not love at first sight. In fact, the novel frustrated me  (incidentally, it was the same when I first met my husband).

Basic plot - a space ship decides to take revenge on the leader of the culture that made - and ultimately attempts to destroy - it (Ancillary Justice, not my marriage; it's still happily intact).

It's fascinating stuff. AI taken to a whole new level. However, the AI can't decipher female from male and so refers to everyone as "she". Sometimes, gender is specified, but then the ship reverts to calling said characters "she". For me, it made connecting with characters really hard. And that made me wonder, why does gender matters in story? Or rather, does gender matter in story? Should it matter? What does Leckie gain by making her story more or less gender neutral?

I haven't finished figuring all of this out, but I have come to the conclusion that for the story, by making everyone gender neutral, characters become sentient beings. That's it. They have flaws and quirks, but in remaining gender neutral, they never became much deeper than that. This may, in part, have to do with the boundaries of my hermeneutics. I live in a world in which, for the most part, the gender of any person I interact with, is clear. With that comes mounds of unspoken data.  Without that, I have to rethink my world. That is what Leckie forced me, as a reader, to do in her novel. I had to see it through a different lens, a new lens, one I haven't completely finished sanding down yet, and won't, without further interaction.

The absence of gender imploded my hermeneutic structure of interpretation. It made me feel uneasy. And it's kept me feeling uneasy. And thinking. In other words, it's genius.

For more great reads, visit Barrie Summy's website. She's got a bushelful!

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Back in June, Laura Reiko Simeon wrote about how race is handled in Swedish picture books. We’re thrilled to host Laura again as she sheds light on how Swedish picture books handle gender and gender-ambiguous characters.

You sit down with your favorite 4-year-old to read a sweet, wordless picture book featuring a little duck swimming down the river. Quickly, without thinking too hard, what pronoun do you use to describe the duck? Do you say, “Look at him paddle past that shaggy dog!” or “What does she see in the sky?”

If you were like the mothers in a 1985 study, you would use masculine pronouns for 95% of animal characters with no gender-specific characteristics. A follow-up study from 1995 examined children’s use of pronouns and found that by age 7 they had absorbed and were repeating these same gender stereotypes. Listen to those around you: has it changed much since then?

In the US, Sweden is widely regarded as a leader in gender equality, although many Swedes still see a need for greater progress. Meanwhile, our own biases are apparent, for example when we consider gendered toys. Compare this 1981 Lego ad, with its blue jeans and t-shirt-clad girl to the pink-infused products targeted at girls today. As with other social issues, picture books reflect concerns in society at large – but how they’ve done so is dramatically different in the US as compared to Sweden.

Some American picture books encourage acceptance of kids who break free from gender restrictions: Charlotte Zolotow’s William’s Doll, Cheryl Kilodavis’s My Princess Boy, and Campbell Geeslin’s Elena’s Serenade, among others. The point of these stories is that a character is acting in opposition to gender norms, but for children who may not yet be aware that they’re “not supposed to” do or like certain things, these well-intentioned books could introduce self-consciousness.

What have largely been missing from English-language picture books are deliberately gender-ambiguous characters that are neither being bullied nor defiant. They just are. Rather than focusing on the consequences (good or bad) of pushing against societal restrictions or elevating the rebel as cultural hero, they turn the focus on the reader. Do we feel uncomfortable if we don’t know someone’s gender? Why? Do we make assumptions about gender based on what someone is doing or wearing? Why?

We do have some characters – e.g. the diverse, roly-poly infants in Helen Oxenbury’s delightful baby books – that are non-gender specific, but they tend to be in simple, relatively plot-free books for the very young. They are distinct from the Swedish picture books in which pronouns are cleverly avoided and characters send deliberately contradictory gender signals. My earlier post about

Swedish approaches to ethnic diversity introduced the concept of not making difference the problem. There is a similar philosophy at work here.

The Swedish Institute for Children’s Books publishes annual “Book Tastings” that identify trends for the year’s publications. The theme for 2012 was “Borders and Border Crossings,” and one border was gender: not just sexual orientation or gender roles, but the concept of gender as an identifier itself.

The anti-bias publisher OLIKA has published several titles of this nature, but the one that made the biggest splash was Kivi and the Monster Dog by Jesper Lundqvist, the first children’s book to use the gender-neutral pronoun, “hen.” (In Swedish, “hon” means “she” and “han” means “he.” First proposed in the 1960s, “hen” was mostly used in academic research and hipster neighborhoods of Stockholm.) In this funny rhyming story, a small person, Kivi, wishes for a pet dog and ends up instead with a demanding beast that runs amok.

Åsa Mendel-Hartvig and Caroline Röstlund write about Tessla, a preschooler clad in gender-neutral clothes and boasting a mop of brown hair. In Tessla’s Mama Doesn’t Want To! and Tessla’s Papa Doesn’t Want To!, the child, in an amusing role reversal, creatively cajoles badly behaving parents into leaving the park, washing their hair, waking up on time or going to work.

Pom and Pim by Olof and Lena Landström may be the only Swedish gender-neutral book that has been translated into English. The first in a series, it features an adventurous toddler, Pom, who sends mixed gender signals: a boyish-sounding nickname, sparse curls, a long purple sweater, and a little pink toy (Pim). The story is told without pronouns, yet two professional American reviewers assumed Pom was male and referred to the character as “he.”

In Maria Nilsson Thore’s Bus and Frö Each on Their Own Island, two gender-ambiguous animals reach out from their lonely islands to become friends. One is shown variously smoking a pipe and knitting. In Jonatan Brännström’s The Lightning Swallower, we never learn the gender of the narrator, who is terrified of thunderstorms.

These books make a reader consider what markers are “masculine” or “feminine” – and why. They don’t dictate what you “should” do – rebel or conform – or offer value judgments about those who do either. In English-language books, feisty heroines reject traditionally female pursuits as “boring” (what about those girls who do love sewing and cooking?) and boys are persecuted for their love of pink and dolls (making these preferences seem risky to express). With their gender-ambiguous characters, Swedes have tilted the lens slightly and given us a whole new perspective through which to consider this topic. Can we change the terms of the discussion instead of framing everything in terms of binary gender categories? Where could that small but crucial shift take us?

The daughter of an anthropologist, Laura Reiko Simeon’s passion for diversity-related topics stems from her childhood spent living all over the US and the world. She fell in love with Sweden thanks to the Swedish roommate she met in Wales while attending one of the United World Colleges, international high schools dedicated to promoting cross-cultural understanding. Laura has an MA in History from the University of British Columbia, and a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Washington. She lives near Seattle.

Filed under: Diversity 102, Diversity, Race, and Representation, Educator Resources, Guest Blogger Post Tagged: gender, gender roles, gender stereotypes, picture books around the world, sweden

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Diversity is a really hot topic in the Kid Lit world these days. At the recent SCBWI International Conference in LA, hundreds of people attended a panel about diversity and a chat afterward. You hear the word being tossed around all over the place, and sometimes I wonder if everyone is talking about the same thing.

Blame it on my days in high school debate, but I always like to define our terms when talking about something that could mean many things. When I think about children's books/literature, I think of diversity coming in three ways.

First, there is a diversity in authors and illustrators. From what I've seen, the Kid Litverse is full of a diverse cross section of authors and illustrators. Dozens of various ethnic and racial origins are represented. Just off the top of my head I can think of Asian, Hispanic, African-American, Native American artists in every age level of our industry. I know many LBGTQ authors and illustrators, men and women. I know some of almost any religious affiliation. Sure it could always be a higher number, which is I think where the discussion starts. It's not that publishers don't want diverse authors and illustrators, nor do they discriminate. Talent is talent. It seems to me the challenge is encouraging, mentoring, and training more people, letting them know their voices are necessary and welcomed. There are many ways we could do this--scholarships for under-represented groups to attend conferences/schools/events, mentoring programs, and contests. SCBWI is on the forefront of this, offering a wide variety of opportunities for everyone, and some special programs for under-represented groups.

Second, there's diversity in the publishing industry. As we all know, the publishing industry does not always embrace change very fast. But there are publishers out there--Lee and Low comes immediately to mind--that particularly focus on diversity in their publishing program. Plus, with the rise of self-publishing, access is there for anyone of any age, gender, ethnic or religious background. The discussion continues into the blogosphere, where there are numerous blogs and other resources where diversity in literature is the frequent topic.

Third, we're talking about diversity in the characters portrayed in children's books, and this is where the discussion can get heated, but I also find it the most interesting. White, middle-class characters have dominated children's literature for decades. But, as we all know, kids come from all sorts of diverse backgrounds, skin colors, religions, genders, sexual identities, and economic status. In the last few decades, we've seen a few more characters of color, particularly in picture books, which is terrific. And in the last decade, we seem to be getting more ethnic backgrounds represented in novels, too. I think we need more LBGTQ characters.  I'd love to see more characters with metal illness, handicaps, autism spectrum syndrome, ADHD. More characters from around the world. Not just Americans with different colors of skin, but different cultures from all over.

Here's where I think things get challenging when we talk about diversity. Who's writing or illustrating these characters? Some people feel strongly that the author/illustrator come from an authentic place in presenting these characters, by which they mean, I think, that only a Native American can authentically write or illustrate a Native American character, for example. I would love to see more people writing characters from their authentic experience, but I also don't think we need to limit ourselves.

Writers and illustrators have always portrayed characters outside of our own experience. We write about historical figures, when we never lived in that time period. We write fantasy, when we've never fought a dragon. It is possible to write characters that are outside your own personal realm of experience. That's why research is so useful and important. I am currently writing a book set during WWII in which one of the main characters is a Japanese American girl. I am Caucasian, so how can my character be authentic? Lots and lots of research. I have another WIP that includes a Native American character. I may not be Native American, but I grew up in a town just outside one of the nation's poorest reservations, and I had daily interactions with Indians both on and off the reservation, so I think I have a fairly authentic grasp of their struggles and issues, even though they are not my personal struggles and issues. I am a female, but one of my latest books is in first person from the point of view of a teenage boy. Again, I live with my teenage son, so I have a pretty good picture of his male voice and viewpoint. I have written gay characters, lesbian characters, and more. Because, basically, I think there are some universalities about our human experience that allow us to imagine and put ourselves into the shoes of people who might be different from ourselves by focusing on what unites us.

To me, this stance isn't a cop out. It's an acknowledgement that an African-American author, for example, is in the best position to authentically portray an African-American character. However, if that author wants to write about a white, middle-class character, I have no problem with that. If he is a good writer, he should be able to manage it. And I think if I do my homework, I can manage to portray an African-American character if I want to. And I want to portray diverse characters. I hope we all do.

I'd love to hear what others think about this.

For more information about diversity in children's literature, check out the We Need Diverse Books campaign, which just recently announced its inception as a 501-c3 non-profit organization.

And look for our Boise SCBWI conference next April, where we plan to focus on diversity in children's literature.


by Neysa CM Jensen
Boise, Idaho

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Women are involved in many organized illegal activities, albeit in small numbers. Editors Rosemary Gartner and Bill McCarthy of The Oxford Handbook on Gender, Sex, and Crime have compiled important information about women’s involvement in organized crime. Here they’ve adapted some information from “Organized Crime: The Gender Constraints of Illegal Markets” by Valeria Pizzini-Gambetta (Chapter 23).

(1) Most organized crime falls into one of two distinct types – illegal industries and mafias — both of which are dominated by males. Illegal industries supply illegal commodities through networks that vary in shape and size according to the circumstances of the trade. Mafias are club-like groups defined by ritual entry, a territorially-based hierarchical structure, and the supply of extra-legal governance to illegal markets. Both types of activity have been dominated by men, but there are many historical examples where women also participated, particularly in illegal industries.

(2) There is historical evidence of mixed-gender groups of criminals. Several mixed-gender groups of criminals roamed the Netherlands and the German territories in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some pirate groups in the Far East were also mixed-gender marauding communi­ties. In the early nineteenth century, Chinese pirates were ruled by the widow of their late general for several years. They formed a nation at sea, in which junks were gender-mixed, with female captives and family members on board. Buccaneer and pirate communi­ties in the Caribbean golden age were essentially gender-exclusive; nevertheless, a handful of women entered the world of sea piracy through love relationships, cross-dressing, and kinship.

(3) Female entrepreneurs have been involved in running illegal businesses in the modern period. Marcellina Cardena, Marie Debrizzi, and Stephanie St. Clair were part of the gender and racial blend that animated gambling in Harlem until the 1930s. These so-called “bankers” needed only cash and a network of policy vendors to conduct illegal gambling. They hired other women to go door to door to take dime bets in exchange for a small percentage of the win from both bankers and winners. Women have also played important roles in the drug trade. In Latin America, Eva Silverstein (arrested in 1917), Sadie Stock (arrested in 1920), and Maria Wendt (arrested in 1936) were part of international rings of traffickers that imported opium and its derivatives from China and Mexico for export to the United States and Europe. More recently, Mahalaxmi Papamani and her network of Tamil female neighbors managed an important share of the drug retailing market in Mumbai in the 1980s.

(4) Although less common, women have also formed gender-exclusive crime groups. The “Forty Elephants” was an all-female group that flourished in the shadow of The Elephant and Castle male gang in London throughout the nineteenth century and well into the 1950s. The young women of this group specialized in shoplifting in the West End. Their sorority was hierarchical and a “queen” was in charge of distributing targets among the group members.

(5) Women often play “traditional” female roles in organized crime. Women have been relatively less involved as active offenders in mafias; instead, traditional female roles remain the most important resource for this type of organized crime. Intelligence gathering, turf monitoring, and hiding illegal commodities or weapons are tasks that can be accom­plished as part of women’s ordinary daily routines. In most groups, women are trusted auxiliaries in a number of capacities at times that are critical for the functioning of the group’s operations.

Headline image: Person in the Shadows with handgun, on natural wooden background. © Alexei Novikov via iStockphoto.

The post Five facts about women’s involvement in organized crime appeared first on OUPblog.

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Three recent YA historical fiction novels by Australian women (all published by HarperCollins/ABC Books) inhabit times when girls had to bend to the influence of men and were comparatively powerless.

The Raven’s Wing is Frances Watts’s first novel for teens. It is set in Ancient Rome where fifteen year-old Claudia is strategically offered in marriage several times. Making an alliance which can best help her family is paramount. Primarily a romance, the book addresses Claudia’s growing awareness of human rights (here through the fate of slaves) which interferes with her sense of duty and makes her a much more interesting character than the docile cipher she is expected to be.

I am Juliet by Australian Children’s Laureate, Jackie French, is based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. French’s Juliet is a fleshed-out focal character. Superficially she shares some of Claudia’s privileged lifestyle features: attended by maids who wash and dress her and apply her makeup; elaborate meals; and protection behind high walls. Medicinal and other herbs and plants are a feature of their times; and Juliet and Claudia both face imminent arranged marriage, but are aware of a dark man in shadows. Their stories, also, contain a story within a story.

Jackie French has reinterpreted Shakespeare previously – in her excellent Macbeth and Son which grapples with the nature of truth. She has also addressed the role of women in history, perhaps most notably in A Rose for the ANZAC Boys. 

 Issy, the thirteen-year-old protagonist of Pamela Rushby’s The Ratcatcher’s Daughter, doesn’t share Claudia and Juliet’s privileged backgrounds. Set in a well-drawn Brisbane of 1900, Issy’s father is a ratcatcher during the bubonic plague. Issy is offered a scholarship to become a teacher but her family refuse it due to lack of money. The issue of the poor’s inability to take up opportunities that the rich assume is reiterated throughout the novel.

The Ratcatcher’s Daughter and I am Juliet include background notes about the historical period and other points of interest.

 These three books unite in their exploration of girls who are prepared to defy tradition to control their own lives, where possible, in spite of general lack of female empowerment. I hope that this really was possible and is not just a revisionist interpretation.

It is interesting that this crop of YA historical novels has appeared now. Are these authors finding a story-niche or reflecting current concern? Although surely girls today, particularly in a country such as Australia, are more fortunate in their freedom and choice. 

 

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By Copyright by Fritz W. Guerin, St. Louis. [Public domain]

Gender seems to be perpetually in the air in the world of librarianship and children's literature.  I have been in this field for a while now and have worked in some different settings, but my setting of well over 10 years now has been in a school.

Over the past month or so I have been paying more attention than usual to our collection, gender and circulation.  I first started off simply with a post-it and two columns.  Each time a student would check out a book, I would mark off the column with the gender identification.  Every day the results would be similar.  The boys and girls in my school check out a similar amount of books.

I then decided to utilize the catalog software. (Anyone who knows me knows that I *love* running statistics!) I started off looking at the top ten patrons (those with the highest number of check outs) for the month, then I ran it back to the last 9 months of the school year.  The results?  Out of the top 10 patrons, 7 of them are boys.  Open the stats up to the top 50 patrons and the gender mix gets closer - 26 girls and 24 boys make up our top 50.

I have many thoughts about the why of this.  We have 4 librarians shepherding our students through their years at school.  Our early childhood librarian is a man, so one of the students first looks at what a reader looks like is Jesse.  We are very mindful about the books we share with our students, and we try incredibly hard to make sure there is a variety with characters who are diverse in all sorts of ways.  When we find stereotypes, we talk about them with the students.  We don't go in for the "Girl's Read" "Guys Read" variety of booklists or book talks.  In fact, two of my favorite anecdotes about assumptions helped make me more aware of my own gender bias after being steeped in this girls vs boys culture my whole life.  We have a boy who is a super reader, and he mostly (to my knowledge) was a reader of graphic novels.  He pretty much read everything we had for his age group by the time he was done with 4th grade.  At the end of the year, I ask the students to reflect and I ask them their favorite title.  His favorite title of all time?  The Penderwicks by Birdsall.  We also had a group of middle school boys who quietly came into the library and methodically checked out every single Clique book.  They didn't hide them, read them out in the open, and felt no shame along the way.

It's really up to the adults in the room to set the tone and fight against the pink and blue tide.  Create a reading culture, make sure you are not perpetuating the stereotype by handing boys sports books and girls friendship books.  Highlight books that get outside of the gender box.  Remember, there are no such thing as boy books and girl books, no matter what some marketing departments might say.

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