What About the Girls?

What About the Girls?

Are we meeting the reading needs of girls aged 8 to 12?

Publishing Associations Children's Bookselling Group seminar

11th May 2009 2:30pm

[The following is paraphrased from the sparse notes, I took whilst people were talking and may contain as much of my opinion on what was said as what was actually said. Apologies for any inaccuracies]

Chairman: Wendy Cooling

Panel: Adele Geras, Sally Gardner, Julia Golding

After a bit of an introduction where we all acknowledge that panel have written too many good books to go through them all in detail Adele kicks off the debate.

[The group quickly fell into the generalisation “pink” book for anything that targets girls specifically eg: Rainbow Magic and “blue” book to describe anything that targets boys.]

Adele:

The quality of product is there. There are a range of books for girls ranging from the pink and fluffy to the meaty and sensitive.

This is met with broad agreement from the assembled booksellers.

Boys won’t choose to pick up “girl” targeted books, but girls are quite happy to pick up books that are clearly aimed at boys.

Teachers are more likely, when selecting a book to read for the class, to pick something that favours the harder to reach boy readers. At best they might select something gender neutral, but very unlikely to pick something with a strong female protagonist or storyline.

How do we get parents to buy more books for female readers?

We need to get readers enthused from a lot earlier than 8 years old. In fact this process needs to have been begun from more like 3 years old to instil a love of reading.

All agree that as long as a young girl reader has a pile of books by her bed, no matter what books they are, that is a success.

Parents should have the confidence/responsibility to increase their children to more complicated books. Parents should encourage children passed 342 pink book to stand alone novels with more complex/realistic characters.

Sally:

The power of storytelling is paramount. The strength of the story should be the first decision making factor and any notions of gender secondary.
In fact publishers, parents and teachers (but mainly publishers) are reinforcing this trend by making it less and less likely for a boy to pick up a very pink girls book and more and more common for female characters in boys books to be marginalised and “girly”.

Julia:

Repeats the idea that Girls read across the gender boundary more easily and that girls are not well represented in the majority of fiction.

Hermione Granger in Harry Potter is the pain in the backside character in Harry Potter while Harry and Ron have all the adventures. Would it have been the same success if it was Harriet Potter?

Thinks that readers need to be encouraged by readers closer to their own age. The idea of bringing in cool older reading role models from secondary school of college to talk about books and show how they have progressed from eg: Jaqueline Wilson to something more complex.

Debate:

When the question is thrown open to the audience the discussion is varied because a clear issue has not been identified. All agree that if readers want to read more complicated books, the books are there for them to get into.

There is agreement that the trend of boxing female characters and books up into obvious stereotypes is a negative one, but also perhaps a necessary one to enable parents to identify relevant titles from clear indicators on the cover.

Also agreement that some authors such as Cathy Cassidy would be suitable for boy readers if they weren’t so clearly packaged for girls. However as many people thought that part of their success was to pick a clear audience to target with the covers and there were other people who could mention examples of gender neutral covers (Michael Morpurgo given as example)

Lots of anecdotes about specific examples where the overt genderising of book covers has been a negative and limiting factor for readers but no consensus that these specific cases should be extrapolated into a wider rule.

Also acknowledged was the idea that the recent push to get boys to read has left girl books conforming to very similar formulas but still no clear conviction that this has somehow damaged girls reading experiences.

Interesting point made that actually it is below the 8-12 age group where gender stereotyping is even more extreme and harder to get away from. While lots of examples were found of books that were non-gender specific or contained strong female role models in the 8-12 group, very few were identified in the 5-8 range.
Recognition that a vast majority of parents were uncertain of what to choose for their children. I drew the personal conclusion that cover stereotyping and age banding helps these parents to make quick choices (but didn’t voice it).

In Conclusion:

No clear problem identified and so it was difficult for the group to answer one. It was quickly established that there were a range of product available to meet the reading needs of those that wanted to read widely. Likewise it was established that “pink” books were not in any way “bad” books. That left the group in a more general quandary about the complex issue of stereotyping of authors and characters and the very general issue of encouraging all children to read more from an earlier age.