Book Rant: Strong Girls & Strong Boys

This was not the post I was planning today, but I have just spent 4 hours searching for some new books for Munchkin and I found it more and more frustrating every minute. Brace yourself because this is going to dissolve into a bit of a rant, and I know that my opinions will not line up with everyone, but that is okay.  These are just my thoughts and the situations I run across while trying to raise a strong, confident and intelligent little boy who will believe he can do anything. 

Children's book week is coming up starting on April 30th and I wanted to find some great new books to feature during the week, including picture books, level readers, middle grade and YA. I always strive to find a great selection of books that will appeal to both young female readers and young male readers, as well as some that are geared more towards the genders individually. But of course having a 5 year old son might make me a little biased towards picking books that will appeal to him, encourage him and give him something to strive towards.  I also really try to find a nice balance of fiction and non-fiction books to not only feature here on the blog but also to fill our shelves. 

So on today's search for some newly released Children's books, I came across a trend that I found interesting in some aspects and extremely frustrating in others.  

Do you know what you will find when you search on Amazon in the books for "Strong Girls"?  An amazing selection of role models for girls, girl power books, books on encouraging girls to awesome.  Books like:

  

  

Those are some really awesome books that fit what I was searching for, and I am all for encouraging young girls to be all that they can and not to let anything hold them back.

Do you know what I got when I searched for Strong Boys? Books like Parenting Teen Boys, Lord of the Flies, Strong Sensitive Boys, etc. A vast majority of the books were parenting books or exercise books, and even books about being strong girls, nothing like the selection for the girls. So I altered my search and searched for Role Models for Boys and came up with 2 pages of books with the best of those being

  

  

Definitely not the selection I was looking for, some good books of course but no where near the level of the selection for girls. 

So I thought maybe I would take my search to Goodreads and see what Listopia could give me, sometimes there are some great lists of lesser known books.   Again I used the same searches and found a great list of  193 books for Children's Picture Books with Strong Females, it has a great combination of new and back list, fiction and non fiction.  After trying a few different search options I finally found a list for the boys, a list of only 10 Picture Books with Positive Role Models for Boys and while it has some books I would have never known about, it is rather disappointing. 

So I went back to a search for just new releases, thinking there has to be some great new release books out.  I know I seen some fantastic books for girls and figured there would be a bunch for boys too.

For the girls, there is definitely no shortage of books featuring fantastic role models for girls to look up to.  Here are a few just a few that I found in a search of new releases from the last 90 days:

  

  

I am so thrilled with the books that young girls will be able to read and be inspired by! You better believe I will be sending a lot of books to my nieces as they grow and read more.

I was also looking for books for boys in the new releases and found them sadly lacking yet again, I even went through all the pages twice to make sure I didn't miss something that I would want for Munchkin.  Here are the few that I did find . . 

  

I was so disappointed but I was determined, I knew there had to be books out there about the male scientists and leaders, and I was right but we have to really dig and search for them. Many of the books I found were published in 2013 or earlier.

  

I was finally happy to have found a nice selection of books, but why did I have to search so hard to find them?! 

I did come across a series that looked promising. The series is called Little People, Big Dreams and looking at the books that pop up in searches you see Harriet Tubman, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart and more, you start to think, finally a found a great series that will have role models from a variety of fields.  But guess what, they are all female! An entire 14 book series called Little People, Big Dreams and not one male in the bunch. It should be called Little Ladies, Big Dreams!

I then came across another series called Ordinary People Who Change the World which is a fantastic series of 16 books that feature role models from both genders in a variety of fields and points in history.  As I was looking at the list on the author's page I came across the box set from the series that is a 4 books set called Strong Girls Gift set and thought, fantastic, I can get a set for my nieces and there has to be a set for boys that I can get for Munchkin and maybe save some money from having to buy them individually.  HAHA! There is no set for boys! Why would you make a set for girls and not the boys?! I honestly hope that since this is a newer series and a new set that they will make one for the boys, I can only hope!

So here is my issue with my findings throughout the day, we have done a fantastic job of encouraging our girls to chase their dreams, giving them a variety of role models in a variety of careers to look up to and I am absolutely thrilled with that.  However, in focusing so much on encouraging the girls, have we forgotten about the boys? Yes there are a wealth of books out there, in fact the past was greatly skewed in the other direction.  But as anyone who is in the market for a book or who has been involved in the book industry in anyway (including avidly reading and blogging) you know that the back list books do not get as much attention and can often be difficult to come by, they aren't as widely available in brick and mortar stores and you really have to know exactly what you are searching for in order to find them. Do I feel that opposite genders can't inspire? Absolutely, any girl can be inspired by a male scientist or doctor, and any boy could be inspired by a female astronaut or biologist, but it is nice to have a book where they can see themselves when they grow up.

Please, if you have any great recommendations, do not hesitate to comment and let me know the books you have enjoyed! I am happy to discuss as well but I ask that any comments be kept civil.