The princess who rescued the prince…
At work (daycare), today was library day. I went with the school-agers and another teacher. A librarian read the kids a couple of stories. Both of them were about fairy tales, and both were a little… non-traditional.
During the battle scene in the second book, the princess saved the prince by sweeping him up into her arms and taking him to safety. How very forward-thinking of this medieval young lady.
Then I heard one of the boys say, “Pshh… it should’ve been the other way around.”
Perhaps all is not lost for the youth of America… 
Filed under: Culture on July 14th, 2008
LOL…that is great! When I was going to the university one of my sociology professors was very distraught because her three year old son loved a series of dinosaur children’s books…and in the books the mother of the main character was wearing an apron. She was so careful to only choose children’s books that were “gender neutral”, but he would get really upset when she tried to takes these away from him. I often wondered if she really thought that she could raise him to have no concept of the differences between the sexes by filtering his books as a child. Interesting! I was encouraged by your anecdote.
Sorry for such a long comment!
Little boys are quite possibly the best hope for Western Civilization.
Regarding children’s literature, in your experience, are there many books and authors out there that boys enjoy reading? On one of our 45-min car rides to church when I was in college, the girls riding in my back seat were recalling all the books they loved reading as little girls. Despite having always been an avid reader, I really couldn’t recall anything beyond the Hardy Boys that I actually enjoyed reading (”Little House” was too girlie, and I wouldn’t have been caught dead reading the “Anne” books).
I’m wondering if there is simply a shortage of decent stories for young boys, or if I was a victim of circumstance?
Agh, I study early childhood education and political correctness in the early childhood years drive me nuts!
In our lectures we are constantly being reminded to not let gender steriotypes reflect in the way we set out toys, the books we read, etc, etc.
In our creative arts class we had to come up with a song to sing (which we then expanded into other activites) and someone said “Polly put the kettle on” and our tutor reminded us that we could change the words for our class so that it was something like “David put the kettle on” . So basically we can’t do any of the traditional stuff unless we change them becasue the political correctness police will come and tell us off.
I felt like saying “Of course I know it is possible for a boy to put on a kettle to make a cup of tea, but in this song it happenes to be a girl.” but of course I didn’t
I love that children will follow their own natrual tendencies and lean towards their “gender stereotypes” no matter how hard PC teachers try to change them.
If I was a “little boy” again, I would read G. A. Henty. Oh, yeah, I read him now too.
Hahahaha love it!
That is extremely funny.
Jennifer, that’s what I thought was so ironic about it. The boys didn’t seem like they had been taught anything about how things “should” be; they just sort of instinctively knew that it wasn’t the princess who should be conquering the dragon for the prince.
Jacob, I think there is much less good literature for young boys than for girls. I don’t know why. I could be wrong b/c I was a little girl and I wasn’t looking for boys’ books… but I’m still not really aware of a lot. Apparently G.A. Henty is one though!
Wow, I haven’t heard of many people who read G.A. Henty…
I liked that little boy’s comment..
BTW, Henty is good for girls too…I appreciate the main characters integrity and hard working attitude.
It’s sad that people are reversing the roles. That comment of the little boy’s was very good!
lol! Wow, smart boy!