I've always been very reluctant to introduce Ishita to the classic princess or rather damsel in distress tales. I also have pretty much steered cleared of every moral story that teach a girl she needs to do as she is told and always ask a man for help.
The problem, as illustrated by this video, is that it limits girls greatly. All books about exploring the world and doing great things have a male protagonist, and if you are lucky a female sidekick. Hardly something that teaches girl they can do things on their own too right?
And don't get me started about the old Disney movies from the 30's up to the 90's where princesses even need help from woodland creatures because they are considered too helpless to save their own butts.
Then of course, there was my own childhood, and the fact that not only did I grew up with books and even cartoons that told me that I could never hope to be more than a Boy hero's sidekick, there was also my teachers and society at large saying rather stupid and ignorant things like "Girls aren't supposed to be good at Maths, Science is for boys" or when I decided to enter a male dominated profession and heard the people who were supposed to train us in the art of upholstery say "Why do we even bother teaching these girls, they will get married and have babies?".
Growing up, I heard about Leonardo Da Vinci, the Wright brothers, Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong, Pasteur, and Bill Gates. All men! I think the only woman I remember hearing about was Marie Curie, but somehow her impact in science was quickly brushed over. No place for achieving women in the curriculum. The only women I ever heard of were fictional, and the type that had their moral or lack of thereof entirely tied to their vagina and what they wore.
Don't scoff just yet! I know you probably have been fed a similar bulk of infos in your school years and fess up! The few women you ever heard about were pretty much given to you as if it was some sort of anomaly that needed to be wiped under the rug.
With that in mind, it is no mystery that not only girls grow up having less confidence than boys, it sadly also help feed the "Boys will be boys" stereotype. If you constantly tell half of the population they can't do certain things because they lack a certain set of genitalia and the other half that they can pretty much have it all, you have created a widely unequal setting.
This book : "Good Night stories for Rebel Girls" by Elena Favili and Francesca Cavallo aim at correcting this bias (affiliate link).
And while I understand the need to give it a title that suggest it's for girls, I think this is a book EVERY kids should own.
First because it gives girls much needed role models to look up to, and then because boys should grow up to understand that history is paved by ladies who contributed as much to it than men and that women achievers aren't anomalies.
This book contains 100 stories of real life women and their amazing stories through the ages and around the globe.
Each story is one page long, with a beautiful illustration on the other, and it features the extraordinary lives of ladies of all walk of life :
Ada Lovelace, they first woman to have created a computer programe (even before computers were a thing). Alicia Alonso a blind ballerina from Cuba, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Cleopatra, Hypatia an Ancient Greece mathematician and philosopher, the Venus Sisters, Maria Montessori, and even Mary Kom from India among many many others.
Spies, pilots, writers, politicians, warriors, pirates, astronauts, models, painters, scientists, athletes, justices...All women, all with impressive achievements to their name. Their stores told in a way a child can understand and feel inspired by. Heroines worth looking up to.
Ishita managed to read 3 stories in a row within minutes of receiving the book then browsed through it for a few hours more just checking if the ladies whose story was written was alive or dead or where they came from or what they did. She has since then read quite a few already and simply won't let us have a look at this book without her if she is awake (we had to peak into it at night).
I have never seen Ishita as excited by a book before, not once. But then she also looks up to strong female characters in fictional stories too. She admires Elsa, Moana and more recently Wonder Woman the very same way I felt I could connect with Princess Leia when I was a kid.
She doesn't need books and stories that tell her she can't do things just because she is a girl.
In fact the first time she came accross a story that featured some inequality was Disney's Mulan. Another character she admires, but when she first saw it she asked me why girls can't join the army. And when I told that in some places people think women should not do it her reply was "That's not fair, it's her choice!"
She was 6 years old at the time, and she came to that conclusion on her own, I had not influenced that reply. She genuinely thought forbidding girls to do something because they are girls and only because they are girls is wrong.
While I played no role in influencing her to make that statement, I sure am doing my part to make sure she is never told she can't do things on the basis of her gender, and that she continues coming across the kind of books, stories and movies that show her possibilities beyond our still very sexist world. I want her to grow in a world where she is an equal to a man in every way.
We might still have a long way to go, this book not only teaches girls they can do it, but also that many women of the past did have to overcome unfair obstacles, like Alfonsina Strada, the first woman to compete in the Giro d'Italia only to be banned from ever doing so again (that did not stop her) on the account that Cycling was a man's sport. She held an unbreakable record for 26 years, but she was still considered less than a man an unfair situation that is still part of her story in the book.
In India, the book is available in leading bookstores and online. The MRP is 799, but it is available for 399 rupees on Amazon, so if you want to gift a good book to your children (boys and girls) go ahead and use my affiliate link to order it. I can guarantee you will not regret it.
The problem, as illustrated by this video, is that it limits girls greatly. All books about exploring the world and doing great things have a male protagonist, and if you are lucky a female sidekick. Hardly something that teaches girl they can do things on their own too right?
And don't get me started about the old Disney movies from the 30's up to the 90's where princesses even need help from woodland creatures because they are considered too helpless to save their own butts.
Then of course, there was my own childhood, and the fact that not only did I grew up with books and even cartoons that told me that I could never hope to be more than a Boy hero's sidekick, there was also my teachers and society at large saying rather stupid and ignorant things like "Girls aren't supposed to be good at Maths, Science is for boys" or when I decided to enter a male dominated profession and heard the people who were supposed to train us in the art of upholstery say "Why do we even bother teaching these girls, they will get married and have babies?".
Growing up, I heard about Leonardo Da Vinci, the Wright brothers, Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong, Pasteur, and Bill Gates. All men! I think the only woman I remember hearing about was Marie Curie, but somehow her impact in science was quickly brushed over. No place for achieving women in the curriculum. The only women I ever heard of were fictional, and the type that had their moral or lack of thereof entirely tied to their vagina and what they wore.
Don't scoff just yet! I know you probably have been fed a similar bulk of infos in your school years and fess up! The few women you ever heard about were pretty much given to you as if it was some sort of anomaly that needed to be wiped under the rug.
With that in mind, it is no mystery that not only girls grow up having less confidence than boys, it sadly also help feed the "Boys will be boys" stereotype. If you constantly tell half of the population they can't do certain things because they lack a certain set of genitalia and the other half that they can pretty much have it all, you have created a widely unequal setting.
This book : "Good Night stories for Rebel Girls" by Elena Favili and Francesca Cavallo aim at correcting this bias (affiliate link).
And while I understand the need to give it a title that suggest it's for girls, I think this is a book EVERY kids should own.
First because it gives girls much needed role models to look up to, and then because boys should grow up to understand that history is paved by ladies who contributed as much to it than men and that women achievers aren't anomalies.
This book contains 100 stories of real life women and their amazing stories through the ages and around the globe.
Each story is one page long, with a beautiful illustration on the other, and it features the extraordinary lives of ladies of all walk of life :
Ada Lovelace, they first woman to have created a computer programe (even before computers were a thing). Alicia Alonso a blind ballerina from Cuba, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Cleopatra, Hypatia an Ancient Greece mathematician and philosopher, the Venus Sisters, Maria Montessori, and even Mary Kom from India among many many others.
Spies, pilots, writers, politicians, warriors, pirates, astronauts, models, painters, scientists, athletes, justices...All women, all with impressive achievements to their name. Their stores told in a way a child can understand and feel inspired by. Heroines worth looking up to.
Ishita managed to read 3 stories in a row within minutes of receiving the book then browsed through it for a few hours more just checking if the ladies whose story was written was alive or dead or where they came from or what they did. She has since then read quite a few already and simply won't let us have a look at this book without her if she is awake (we had to peak into it at night).
I have never seen Ishita as excited by a book before, not once. But then she also looks up to strong female characters in fictional stories too. She admires Elsa, Moana and more recently Wonder Woman the very same way I felt I could connect with Princess Leia when I was a kid.
She doesn't need books and stories that tell her she can't do things just because she is a girl.
In fact the first time she came accross a story that featured some inequality was Disney's Mulan. Another character she admires, but when she first saw it she asked me why girls can't join the army. And when I told that in some places people think women should not do it her reply was "That's not fair, it's her choice!"
She was 6 years old at the time, and she came to that conclusion on her own, I had not influenced that reply. She genuinely thought forbidding girls to do something because they are girls and only because they are girls is wrong.
While I played no role in influencing her to make that statement, I sure am doing my part to make sure she is never told she can't do things on the basis of her gender, and that she continues coming across the kind of books, stories and movies that show her possibilities beyond our still very sexist world. I want her to grow in a world where she is an equal to a man in every way.
We might still have a long way to go, this book not only teaches girls they can do it, but also that many women of the past did have to overcome unfair obstacles, like Alfonsina Strada, the first woman to compete in the Giro d'Italia only to be banned from ever doing so again (that did not stop her) on the account that Cycling was a man's sport. She held an unbreakable record for 26 years, but she was still considered less than a man an unfair situation that is still part of her story in the book.
In India, the book is available in leading bookstores and online. The MRP is 799, but it is available for 399 rupees on Amazon, so if you want to gift a good book to your children (boys and girls) go ahead and use my affiliate link to order it. I can guarantee you will not regret it.
