{"id":221478,"date":"2014-03-19T19:29:18","date_gmt":"2014-03-19T19:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/03\/19\/i-wouldnt-mind-but-splitting-childrens-books\/"},"modified":"2014-03-19T19:29:18","modified_gmt":"2014-03-19T19:29:18","slug":"i-wouldnt-mind-but-splitting-childrens-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/03\/19\/i-wouldnt-mind-but-splitting-childrens-books\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
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I wouldn\u2019t mind, but splitting children\u2019s books strictly along gender lines is not even good publishing. Just like other successful children\u2019s books, The Hunger Games was not aimed at girls or boys; like JK Rowling, Roald Dahl, Robert Muchamore and others, Collins just wrote great stories, and readers bought them in their millions. Now, Dahl\u2019s Matilda is published with a pink cover, and I have heard one bookseller report seeing a mother snatching a copy from her small son\u2019s hands saying \u201cThat\u2019s for girls\u201d as she replaced it on the shelf.<\/p>\n

You see, it is not just girls\u2019 ambitions that are being frustrated by the limiting effects of \u201cbooks for girls\u201d, in which girls\u2019 roles are all passive, domestic and in front of a mirror. Rebecca Davies, who writes the children\u2019s books blog at Independent.co.uk, tells me that she is equally sick of receiving \u201cbooks which have been commissioned solely for the purpose of \u2018getting boys reading\u2019 [and which have] all-male characters and thin, action-based plots.\u201d What we are doing by pigeon-holing children is badly letting them down. And books, above all things, should be available to any child who is interested in them.<\/p>\n

Happily, as the literary editor of The Independent on Sunday, there is something that I can do about this. So I promise now that the newspaper and this website will not be reviewing any book which is explicitly aimed at just girls, or just boys. Nor will The Independent\u2019s books section. And nor will the children\u2019s books blog at Independent.co.uk. Any Girls\u2019 Book of Boring Princesses that crosses my desk will go straight into the recycling pile along with every Great Big Book of Snot for Boys. If you are a publisher with enough faith in your new book that you think it will appeal to all children, we\u2019ll be very happy to hear from you. But the next Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen will not come in glittery pink covers. So we\u2019d thank you not to send us such books at all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Gender-specific books demean all our children. So the Independent on Sunday will no longer review anything marketed to exclude either sex – Comment – Voices – The Independent<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

AMAZE!<\/p>\n

(via thebooksmith<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wouldn\u2019t mind, but splitting children\u2019s books strictly along gender lines is not even good publishing. Just like other successful children\u2019s books, The Hunger Games was not aimed at girls or boys; like JK Rowling, Roald Dahl, Robert Muchamore and others, Collins just wrote great stories, and readers bought them in their millions. Now, Dahl\u2019s … <\/p>\n

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