Books in Babeland

Books likeThe Girls Book: How to Be the Best in Everything, For Girls Only: Everything Great About Being a Girl, The Daring Book for Girls, and The Big Book of Girl Stuff are rubbing me the wrong way.

The idea of the books is to capture the interest of girls, and each one of the above mentioned books has a brother geared towards boys. However, that is exactly the problem. Unlike the book Girl Power: Young Women Speak Out! or Girl Wise: How to Be Confident, Capable, Cool and in Control, these books were conceived and designed alongside a male counterpart. They were written to differentiate girls from boys according to their interests.

Let's compare the supposed girl interests with the boy interests. The following are from How to Be the Best at Everything and the Daring/Dangerous books.

Books marketed to GIRLS vs BOYS chapter topics:
How to look best in your photos/How to survive in space
How to do a perfect handstand/How to rip a phonebook in half
How to make a friendship bracelet/How to be a VIP
How to be a natural beauty/How to be a Wimbledon champion
Pressing flowers/Making a water bomb
Four Square/How to play stickball
Spanish terms of endearment/Navajo code talkers' dictionary
Making a cloth covered book/Making cloth fireproof

There is more than one problem here. The most immediate and obvious problem is how the books reinforce the strict gender roles embedded in American culture- roles that ultimately inhibit women from achieving positions of power and encourage men to be insensitive war mongers unable to communicate (except, apparently, in Navajo.) For kids these gender roles make it unacceptable for girls to join in certain sports, or for boys to touch anything pastel. How often have we heard, "No, honey, you don't want the pink one, pink is for girls." Well, sure it is, if you make it so.

The second qualm I have with these books is that many of the topics are just for KIDS! As a fifth grade teacher in East New York, Brooklyn I will swear on For Boys Only: The Biggest, Baddest Book Ever, that boys. make. friendship bracelets. Trust me, I have a confiscated collection in my desk drawer right alongside the tech decks.

By divvying up these activities into boys and girls we only limit what our children explore. While in theory they show a world of fun things to do, all I see is the other world the reader is being excluded from. The natural curiosity of children leads them to be interested in topics that transcend gender-specific books. Despite having kid-friendly information and design, I cannot, in good conscience, put books like these in kids' hands.

You Say Potato, I Say Solanum Tuberosum

Learning how to communicate and work with people who are different from ourselves is a fundamental part of growing up. For Emma-Jean and Ted the task is that much harder. They often have trouble understanding their peers, but they both know that they are a little different. Emma-Jean is strange. Ted's brain uses a different operating system. Without ever saying it explicitly, authors Lauren Tarshis (Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of Tree) and Siobahn Dowd (The London Eye Mystery) have written characters struggling with some degree of Asperger's Syndrome.


The proof? Both characters are literal. Ted, especially, spends the book deciphering the non-sensical language of idiomatic speech. Both characters fail to understand social cues. Emma-Jean, especially, does not realize when she is being teased or ostracized by her peers. Ted uses a series of memorized clues to help him recognize facial expressions or gestures. Neither likes to be touched. Both have focused interests and amass details about specific topics. Emma-Jean can be found standing in her yard giving the Latin names for the flora and fauna.


There is a humanity to these books. While wikipedia informs me that the collection of details often does not imply a vested interest (ex: memorizing camera model numbers but not being interested in photography), Emma-Jean and Ted do not fit that sympton. Emma-Jean's obsession with science stems from the loss of her father. Naming trees and flowers is an attempt to relive the comfort of his presence. Ted is obsessed with weather reports, however it is part of a greater dream of being a meteorologist. He plays with words and likens his sister Kat to Hurricane Katrina and other Katastrophes. He uses the weather as an outlet when he can't sleep, is distressed, and just generally as a filter through which he examines the world around him. These insights into their compulsive behavior gives depth and sentiment to the books.


Each book makes use of a symbol. Emma-Jean has the tree. The tree is part of nature and can be studied, sketched, understood. She climbs it in great haste to try and reach out to a classmate who she believes needs her help. It represents the effort she makes to communicate with others. Of course, to fall from such great heights is a painful emotional letdown. However, as her mother says, sometimes you just have to try another tree or hold on tighter.


For Ted, the great London Eye overlooks his investigations into his cousin's disappearance. From the Eye you see London in a different way, like using a different operating system. The constantly changing view reminds us that there are an infinite number of ways to look at the world. These two books help the reader better understand one more.

Sketch of Solanum Tuberosum

When I Was Your Age

My world revolves around Jon Szieszka these days. We read his autobiography, Knucklehead, for class. The school I observed in had him come speak, and at the school where I work the third grade is writing essays about him and David Shannon.

Knucklehead is very similar to Roald Dahl's Boy in the nature of the stories, though the tone is much more informal. Scieszka, a self-purported panderer to reluctant readers, has chosen a comic book cover and writes about broken bones, urination, swearing, pagan babies, and more urination. Dahl is no stranger to the grotesque. Boy details dead mousecapades, canings, and the anesthetic-free removal of his tonsils and adenoids, but the text is denser and it reads much more like a memoir. Sciezka's tone is of your favorite uncle telling you a whopper- one per chapter.

After hearing him speak, I have no doubt Scieszka is a favorite uncle who tells whoppers. His demeanor is easy, his smile is constant, and his ability to connect with the children unparalleled. No question was too silly or too redundant. No suggestion too wild: You think I should have the Space Heads (his current project in the works) use orange juice as a mind control potion and try to take over the world? Well maybe you're right! Yet the presentation was subtly full of inspiration for future writers and illustrators. Scieszka showed the students how Shannon's illustrations in Robot Zot use perspective to make Zot seem larger than life. He explained that Shannon added things to the story solely through illustration that he had not originally included, like Zot's dog. He talked about the terror that all authors must face- the dreaded...blank page (he brandishes a blank legal pad as if it were a weapon.) And he showed students his writing process from illegible notes to published books.

Scieszka's great accomplishment with Knucklehead is writing a book that is grown up, amusing, and cool, while remaining manageable for struggling readers. The chapters are short and to the point. The vocabulary is straight forward and the themes are familiar to kids- siblings, school, and messing around. This is a book a struggling reader can carry around while enjoying the success of actually reading it.

Besides the Time Warp Trio books, Scieszka has written illustrated books. Big, glossy books with bold illustrations by Shannon or Lane Smith. The younger readers of his books can easily have Knucklehead read aloud to them. The stronger readers among them can read it by themselves. But Knucklehead is more than that because those of us who are older and love his wacky spoofs (by the way the idea for Stinky Cheeseman came to Scieszka when his daughter, then about five, insisted that he read her the Gingerbread Man over and over and over and over until he came up with an alternative) can appreciate this insight into his wonderfully twisted mind.

A child's rendition of Zot, hung to welcome Scieszka to the school.

Positive Value Meal

Encyclopedia Brown and Fletcher Moon, meet Matt Stevens, your average tween detective. His middle school runs smooth as a well-blended vanilla milkshake and he uses more similes than a fifth grade poetry unit. The Big Splash reads like realistic fiction, but disbelief must be suspended. In this pulpy world organized crime boss, Vinny Biggs, runs a tight operation of black market candy and hall passes. He keeps bullies off the playground with his team of pants-wetting assassins. Once your crotch has been targeted you are officially in The Outs, the most undesirable social caste.

Author Jack D. Ferraiolo has paid the attention to detail on this world usually reserved for the creation of alternate dimensions or magical realms. Instead here you can stop by Sal's backyard speak easy or drop by the hard nosed reporter's office in the old gym storage room. Every character has a stereotypical role to fill. The gangster, the reporter, the damsel in distress. The cop, the detective, the bodyguard, the hitman. Because this is a world of organized crime it isn't so clear who is good and who is bad.

The subplot hidden behind all the intrigue is whether Matt can stick to his morals while being employed by the less than trustworthy criminal mastermind. Maybe it's because his Mom is such a hard worker. Maybe it's because the disappearance of his father has left him with an Agent Mulder-like obsession with the truth. Maybe it's because he's seen what happens to kids (like his ex-best friend Kevin) who trade in their freewill for a little clout and authority. Probably for all these reasons Matt stays true to himself and sees the case through. This little lesson is most driven home when Kevin sees the error of his ways and leaves the organization in favor of true friends. The morals in The Big Splash can be harder to find than incriminating evidence in Vinny Biggs's locker though, so mired is the story in its own campiness.

Jacqueline Woodson's After Tupac and D Foster also tells the story of a young girl trying to reconcile her two halves into one whole self. Her world is a realistic portrayal of Queens. Though things seem to be falling apart around her- a family friend incarcerated, her favorite rapper shot and on trial, a friend in foster care- she doesn't face the same blatant moral dilemmas that Matt does. Rather her emotional journey is understanding herself, how she relates to those around her and to the world at large.

It's not that she doesn't have to make choices. But those choices are all down the road. The development here is internal- recognizing the sting of homophobic rap lyrics shows her that she accepts her Neeka's brother Tash for who he is regardless of how the neighborhood judges him. Jealousy creeping up and subsiding allows her to share Johnjay's attention with D. Racism playing out in the park down the street reminds her that life as young black person is obstacle ridden, often unjustly. Sometimes the hardest thing is just accepting that people grow up or move away and remembering that they still love you.

The girls' bond is strong. The reader is left knowing that, when the time comes to choose, this young woman and her friends will stay true to themselves and each other.