kidlit: recommend/remind me!
Jul. 18th, 2011 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceeloveIt's occurred to me, in the midst of reading a shelf full of chapter books to S this past year, that there are more Strong Female Leads (tm) in kidlit than I would have guessed. Like, everybody knows it's next to impossible to find good role models for young girls, the best we can do is screen out the worst of the BarbieDisneyprincessy idiocy, right?
But with S being all about Oz and Ramona Quimby, it's made me stop and think. What enduring kidlit can you think of that features a strong girl? And what do I mean by "strong"? Well, I'd say, self-aware (or at least growing in self-awareness), curious and inventive in figuring out her world, able to balance kindness and assertiveness. And by "enduring," I'd say, still resonates with a generation other than the one it was written for.
examples:
Dorothy, Ozma, and others in the Oz books
Pippi Longstocking
Laura and others in the "Little House" series
Beezus and Ramona
"Anne of Green Gables" etc
Heidi
Mary from "A Secret Garden"
Fern in "Charlotte's Web"
Aerin in "The Hero and the Crown"
What kidlit can you name that features a strong girl? a strong boy? a strong ensemble? Which doesn't just mean, whatever kids in classic kidlit. For example, the kids in Mary Poppins don't really do things so much as experience stuff - the stories are kind of picaresque, but with the adventures coming to them instead. The kids in the Narnia books (or the Half-Magic books), on the other hand, take their fates into their own hands in their pursuit of magic.
But with S being all about Oz and Ramona Quimby, it's made me stop and think. What enduring kidlit can you think of that features a strong girl? And what do I mean by "strong"? Well, I'd say, self-aware (or at least growing in self-awareness), curious and inventive in figuring out her world, able to balance kindness and assertiveness. And by "enduring," I'd say, still resonates with a generation other than the one it was written for.
examples:
Dorothy, Ozma, and others in the Oz books
Pippi Longstocking
Laura and others in the "Little House" series
Beezus and Ramona
"Anne of Green Gables" etc
Heidi
Mary from "A Secret Garden"
Fern in "Charlotte's Web"
Aerin in "The Hero and the Crown"
What kidlit can you name that features a strong girl? a strong boy? a strong ensemble? Which doesn't just mean, whatever kids in classic kidlit. For example, the kids in Mary Poppins don't really do things so much as experience stuff - the stories are kind of picaresque, but with the adventures coming to them instead. The kids in the Narnia books (or the Half-Magic books), on the other hand, take their fates into their own hands in their pursuit of magic.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-07-19 01:09 am (UTC)Matilda, in Roald Dahl's Matilda
T.J. Wexler in The Westing Game
and +1 to the Mixed-Up Files and to Mrs. Frisby (though she is one of those girl heroines who needs the boys to help her out - she frequently turns to the male rats, her late husband, and so on and verrrry slowly gains confidence in herself, no?)
and, obscure rather than enduring, my first childhood "SF"ish book, The Bears Upstairs by Dorothy Haas. Features a girl named Wendy who helps rescue some talking Earth bears who are trying to travel to space to join the bear planet. Suffers a bit from the same "heroine is clueless and defers to clueful male figures" but this may be more because she is in 4th grade and Dr. Corrigan is a PhD scientist who met the bears first, though.
Still, one of the things I like in The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler is that both the kid heroine Claudia *and* the wise grownup Mrs. Frankweiler are female.