Where the girls are: 01/09/16

The January 8th issue of The Washington Post has an article wondering Why are there so few girls in children's books?. The article cites a 2011 Florida State University study that finds a huge gender bias in favor of male characters (human or otherwise) in children's literature.

To be honest, I've not tracked nor counted the number of female protagonists in the children's lit I've read and reviewed. My book blogging coincides with the birth of my youngest child, a daughter. Much of my children's book reviews especially early on were dictated by her interests and those have always skewed towards reading about a diverse range of female characters.

When she was first learning to talk she insisted on using she or everything except specific people or animals she knew for a fact to be male. It was an eye opening experience. In keeping with that, I did my best to find books with female characters and plots that interested her.

Thankfully our local public library does an excellent job of collection development and I had no problem in finding books to meet her needs.

So in response to the Post article, I've created a list of the books I've reviewed that contain a female (human or otherwise) protagonist. I'm not including books that have an ensemble cast or a boy and girl co-lead. This list does, though, include transgender leads who self identify as female.

This list though isn't meant to be a "girls' book" list. A girl as a protagonist doesn't prevent boys or anyone else to read the book.

View the list

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