Representations of witches and witchcraft in literature and in popular culture generally are incredibly useful to us, providing a way of critiquing the situation of women under patriarchy that is both effective and accessible.

Children’s literature is particularly rife with such representations. From the wicked women of Grimm and Perrault and folkloric creations like Baba Yaga and Ceridwen, through C.S. Lewis’ Jadis and the maleficent creations of Mary de Morgan to 20th century inventions like TH White’s Madam Mim and the female students of Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, lady sorcerers – both good and evil – have never been far from the pages of the books we have used to educate and entertain our children.

The witches of the classic fairytales and of the stories of the Victorian era are usually monstrous and spiteful, using their magic in service of the Devil – or worse, their own self-interest. They taunt because they can and have few, if any, redeeming characteristics.

In recent decades the image of the image of the witch in popular culture has undergone a transformation, in no small part due to the witches that have appeared in juvenile literature. Since the 1970s, the stories our children have read have overwhelmingly featured good witches (though the frequency with which they are presented as inept deserves some attention). These are my favourites of the modern circle.

Mildred Hubble

Created when Jill Murphy was a teenager, The Worst Witch series follows the adventures of Mildred Hubble as she navigates the social and academic challenges of Miss Cackle’s Academy, a draughty old castle that perches atop a thickly forested mountain and ‘looks more like a prison than a school’.

It’s an uncomfortable enough environment for a youngster to be in, but Mildred has an added disadvantage, being marked as an outsider by her unkempt appearance and her tabby cat (given to her when the rest of the girls receive sleek black kitties).

She was one of those people who always seem to be in trouble. She didn’t exactly mean to break rules and annoy the teachers, but things just seemed to happen when Mildred was around.

– The Worst Witch

The young witch is thoroughly well-meaning and a little too clever for her own good, but she’s also bumbling and frequently wrangling with authority figures. Despite her perceived inadequacies, there’s an air of serendipity that follows her around; her failures and misdeeds inevitably lead to a positive outcome of much greater consequence than the proceeding mishap.

Perhaps this is why she is so well-loved by young readers and so fondly remembered by adults. Often we can see a little of ourselves in Mildred – from her practical incompetence to her trailing shoe laces, she’s a reminder that you don’t have to be perfect to be wonderful.

Mary Newbury

The only work of historical fiction on my list, Celia Rees’ Witch Child is an overtly feminist text. The protagonist of the book (and its sequel, Sorceress) is Mary Newbury, an adolescent witch forced to flee to the New World following the violent death of her grandmother at the hands of
witch-hunters.

Caught between a desire to be true to herself and the hypocrisy of Puritanism, Mary is headstrong, smart, empathetic and brave. She exhibits a tolerance that is unusual for her era and generally makes herself an excellent role model for young readers.

For Mary, independence poses a threat – she lives in a time that fears capable women, and her agency and determination could lead her to the same fate as her grandmother. But still she forges onwards, using her wit and her alacrity to light the way and finding friendship and love among another marginalised group.

I should flee, get away. They will turn on me next unless I go. But where to? What am I to do? Lose myself. Die in the forest. I look around. Eyes, hard with hatred, slide from mine. Mouths twitch between leering and sneering. I will not run away into the forest, because that is what they want me to do.

– Witch Child

Tiffany Aching

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series is often lauded as feminist; he ridicules misogyny and satirises stereotypes, he writes Strong Female Characters. But there is an incongruency to Pratchett’s feminism which undermines his intended message and ultimately, Discworld is, whisper it, not that feminist.

Tiffany Aching is, to paraphrase her creator, the most feminist of the feminists that he does not have. A child savant, she begins her witching career at nine years old when she embarks upon a quest to save her brother from a sinister fairyland a la Labyrinth. She’s got common sense and amazing chutzpah. While remaining a completely believable pre-teen, she’s shrewd, smart and she will not be condescended to.

‘Zoology, eh? That’s a big word, isn’t it?’
‘No, actually it isn’t,’ said Tiffany. ‘Patronising is a big word. Zoology is quite short.’

– The Wee Free Men

As Tiffany grows up (she is approaching 16 at the time of I Shall Wear Midnight) It becomes clear that she is the natural successor to Granny Weatherwax, the number one witch of the Discworld series, as she begins to display magical abilities rare in people of her age as well as exhibiting characteristics she shares with her mentor – gravitas, knowledge, a tendency towards literalism and the belief that a witch should remain single. Tiffany will ultimately become a better witch than Granny, and it is a pleasure to watch her get there.

Minerva McGonagall

Transfiguration Mistress – and latterly Deputy Headmistress – at Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall is both wise and motherly, embodying a binary that women are frequently told they cannot.

McGonagall cares for her charges deeply, but not blindly. She is fair and ethical and has gained great respect within the Hogwarts hierarchy. She’s often sharp with students and teachers alike, she’s a keen believer in rules – without being mindlessly bound to them – and she’s a fan of order in her classroom.

With a witty remark or condescending quip never far from her thin lips, Minerva McGonagall is a force to be reckoned with.

‘Oh, I can’t wait to see McGonagall inspected,’ said Ron happily. ‘Umbridge won’t know what’s hit her.’

– Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Though she is a slight woman in her seventies, McGonagall is a fearless combatant in the battle that rages at the close of the series, directing the action and engaging directly with Voldemort in defence of the institution and the people that she loves.

There are many women in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series that display fine qualities – caring and protective Mrs Weasley; book-smart Hermione; fearless Tonks; even Delores Umbridge can be admired for her sheer bloodymindedness and determination. But McGonagall seems to embody all these qualities and then some.

Winnie the Witch

Winnie the Witch lived in a black house in the forest. The house was black on the outside and black on the inside. The carpets were black. The chairs were black. The bed was black and it had black sheets and black blankets. Even the bath was black.

Winnie lived in her black house with her cat, Wilbur. He was black too. And that is how the trouble began.

– Winnie the Witch

Winnie the Witch – not to be confused with the 1970s Charlton Comics character of the same name – made her first appearance in 1987.

Created by Valerie Thomas and illustrated by Korky Paul, she’s a comical character by design, gangly and tall with an unruly mane of black hair and a reddened nose that I like to imagine comes from a fondness for gin. When we first meet her, she is the only colourful thing in a very dark world. A series of books for middle grade readers featuring Winnie is also available, written by Laura Owen.

But Winnie has no qualms over using her magic to amend the world around her to suit her own purposes without considering the consequences. Winnie is heedless and impulsive, with a catch-all cry of ‘ABRACADABRA’ that, predictably, gets her into scrapes.

She learns from her blunders, though, and she puts things right with grace and unerrring joy. Winnie the Witch lives a hedonistic life and she makes mistakes, but she’s always got a genuine smile on her face and that’s what makes her so refreshing.

Bonus Material: HERE IS THE ACTUAL MASTER READING WINNIE THE WITCH.

• Libby earned her feminist stripes interning for the Fawcett Society where she was horrified by most of the stories she heard. An accidental activist, she is a regular contributor to BCN. Her blog, TreasuryIslands, is the home of her other passion – children’s literature. Libby is very proud of her bad reputation.

When I think about everything about womanhood that hamstrung me with fear when I was thirteen it all came down, really, to princesses. I didn’t think I had to work hard to be a woman (which is scary but obviously eventually achievable). I thought I had to somehow magically – through superhuman psychic effort – transform into a princess instead. That’s how I’d get fallen in love with. That’s how I’d get along. That’s how the world would welcome me.

– Caitlin Moran, How to be a Woman

Welcome to part two of Kickass Princesses – a look at some subversive female protagonists in children’s literature. You can read Part 1 here.

The more children’s books I read and the more princesses I come to know, the more I realise that ‘kickass’ probably wasn’t the best term to use. Some of these characters do kick ass, but the main feature is turning out to be simply that they make unconventional princesses.

As the archetype of a fairytale princess is so ingrained, it takes looking at a wide variety of ‘unprincessy’ examples to unpick exactly what some of our starting assumptions are. A closer look at the ‘unconventional’ princesses here, and in my previous post, reveals that these women and girls have agency, interests, and are more than just a beautiful, delicate, unsullied physical appearance. Sometimes they aren’t even beautiful at all. What they are – what, we realise, makes them ‘unprincessy’ – is often simply the fact that they are two-dimensional characters.

Ouch. This stereotype needs subverting roughly forever ago. On with the show…

The Ordinary Princess

• Written and illustrated by MM Kaye, published in 1980 by Doubleday

At 107 pages, this one’s aimed at a slightly older age group than the rest of the books in this post, which are all picture books.

The plot begins when the seventh princess is born in the land of Phantasmorania, and even the fairies are invited to the Christening, despite the King’s reservations. The bad-tempered and seaweedy fairy Crustacea, pissed off by the bad journey in to the palace, gives the baby the gift of ordinariness. Instantly the baby cries for the first time, and becomes considerably less attractive. As she grows up, our girl Amethyst (known as Amy) doesn’t look great in fine gowns like her blonde, willowy, ethereal and frankly boring and unknowable sisters. Instead, she loves climbing down the wisteria which grows up the castle walls and sneaking out to the forest.

Thanks to her extremely ordinary looks, Amy turns out to be impossible to marry off. Oh, the shame of it all! Not that our girl is bothered, but the rest of the kingdom is. When she learns of a harebrained scheme to get her rescued from a dragon so a prince will be obliged to marry her, she runs away to the forest, where she lives happily until her clothes start falling apart. So, in need of money to buy a new dress, she goes and gets a job in another palace, living in disguise as an ordinary girl. Where she meets a prince – but I’ll leave some plot to those who want to read it.

The style of writing makes for a truly luscious fairytale, and the black and white line-drawn illustrations by the author are very pretty too (just the right side of twee). Plot-wise, this book is strongest in its treatment of Amy’s interaction with Crustacea, her Godmother, who is practical, warm-yet-tough, and advises her to get on with it.

It’s weakest – in my humble socialist opinion – when our girl loves every minute of working insane hours on the lowest rungs of the servant-ladder. C’mon, girlie, you’ve worked out it’ll take you roughly a year to earn enough to buy a new dress. Aren’t you a bit annoyed at the sucky pay? Also: the insinuation throughout the book that freckles and an upturned nose make someone undateable got on my nerves quite a bit. Freckles can be well hot, and don’t get me started on pixie faces…

(Interestingly, each book I’ve looked at for these posts has often pushed an idea of what a typical beautiful princess looks like, but none of them quite match.)

I was a little disappointed in how conventionally the ends got tied up, but I suppose how the plot came to be is more important than what came to be. Our girl has agency, there’s no doubt about it. And there’s nothing wrong with a happy ending.

Princess Pigsty

• By Cornelia Funke and Kerstin Meyer, Chickenhouse, 1997

In Princess Pigsty our girl is one of three sisters, who live the traditional fairytale princess life:

Their beautiful clothes filled thirty wardrobes. They had footmen to blow their noses for them and ladies-in-waiting to tidy up their rooms, hang up their clothes and polish their crowns until they shone.

Every morning, three teachers taught them royal behaviour – how to sit on a throne without fidgeting, how to curtsey without falling over, how to yawn with your mouth closed and how to smile for a whole hour without taking a break.

Isabella, the youngest, despite being perfectly capable of walking the princessy walk, is not happy, and makes her feelings known by waking up the whole castle shouting:

“I am tired of being a princess! It’s boring, boring, boring!”
Her older sisters looked up from their feather pillows in surprise.

“I want to get dirty!” cried Isabella, bouncing around on the bed. “I want to blow my own nose. I don’t want to smile all the time. I want to make my own sandwiches. I don’t want to have my hair curled ever again. I do not want to be a princess any more!”

And with that she took her crown and threw it out of the window. Splash! It landed in the goldfish pond.

In the pitched battle of wills with the King that follows, Isabella is sent to work in the kitchens until she changes her mind. When she enjoys her work in the kitchens, learning about how their food is made and essentially having too much fun to relent, she’s sent to the pigsty – where she gets along with the pigs and enjoys their company even more.

Eventually, seeing there is no way around it, her father relents and says she doesn’t have to be all princessy if she doesn’t want to – but by now our girl likes the pigs and stays in the pigsty just as often as in her feather bed.

Though no mention is made of any innate unprincessy looks (beyond curled hair), Isabella rejects her princessy role in life quite actively. While Amy of The Ordinary Princess is a failure at traditional princessy things (but isn’t that bothered about it, either) Isabella has lots of guts and lots of agency, not to mention an upbeat and cheerful nature. Eventually her father is won round. The patriarch isn’t a baddie, and – once it’s clear she’s happier that way – he accepts her as she is. Tangled, mucky and doing things that interest her. Hip-hip hooray for doing what you want! Hip-hip hooray for converting people! Hip-hip hooray for male allies!

Shrek!

• William Steig, Macmillan, 1990

Didn’t know Shrek started out as a book? It did, and it was… not a huge amount like the movie franchise. (Have the first part read to you by Stanley Tucci here, though sadly without pictures.) Shrek, in both media, is a famously revolting and ugly character, who delights in his own disgustingness (“wherever Shrek went, every living creature fled. How it tickled him to be so repulsive”) – but that’s where most of the similarities end.

The book is a very short picture book with a quest narrative. A witch tells Shrek’s fortune: “Then you wed a princess who/Is even uglier than you.” Shrek decides this sounds great, and goes off in search of this princess.

He strode in and his fat lips fell open. There before him was the most stunningly ugly princess on the surface of the planet.

When they meet they declare their love for each other’s revoltingness, and live “horribly ever after.” But if you’ve seen any of the movies, you’ll know this wasn’t quite how it went down when Dreamworks got their hands on it.

In the movie Princess Fiona (who has a name, unlike in the book) is only ugly after dark, – during the day she appears as a beautiful woman, and during the night she is an ogre, and she’s self-conscious about it. The only way to cure this is with “true love’s kiss” – and it’s initially an unpleasant surprise for her to learn that when the spell is broken she’s actually stuck with ogre mode constantly.

While the movie does feature a green monster called Shrek and an (eventually) ‘ugly’ princess – their unconventionality is treated as something they’re both self-conscious about. Fiona, especially, with all the princessy expectations heaped upon her, needs reassurance that she’s loveable.

Alhough the movie doesn’t mention weight specifically, one of the main factors of Fiona’s transformation (apart from the green skin) is that she becomes considerably heavier. Fiona is more of an everywoman – learning that she doesn’t need to be a size 8 to find love – and literally kicking ass. Caitlin Moran tracks the rewrite as part of a post-feminist trend:

In the last decade the post-feminist reaction to princesses has been the creation of alternative princesses: the spunky chicks in Shrek and the newer Disney films who wear trousers, do kung fu and save the prince.

While some cool people (I’m looking at you, Babette Cole) have been subverting these roles for a long time, it takes a while before the effect trickles down to a Hollywood blockbuster and the much wider audience that a movie like Shrek can reach.

While the original very short picture book is more about two people with unconventional values and no qualms or neuroses about them – a la The Twits or The Addams Family – the movie Shrek presents Fiona as someone extremely kickass, but with a fairly conventional narrative of body issues (though admittedly hers are mythical ones) and a postmodern self-consciousness about breaking the known conventions of the ‘fairytale’ wedding.

In this way Fiona is far more relatable (and has infintely more agency) than the nameless princess in the book, but part of me is sad that she doesn’t start with the self-assurance of our happily ugly picturebook princess. After all – if this is a world where gingerbread men can talk and cats can fence – surely we can have a princess who can just get on with her thang without worrying about being pretty enough?

Coming up next time:

• “Rapunzel’s Revenge – Fairytales for Feminists”
• Tatterhood
• The Tough Princess
• And more…

In the world of children’s books there’s a double-whammy of bad female role models and massive under-representation. There’s only one female character to every 1.6 male characters. One of the few regular traditional roles for girls in children’s literature is that of the princess, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that the traditional princess trope doesn’t give girls many positive or useful goals to aim for: look pretty, be born into or marry into hereditary privilege and… uh… that’s it. Happily ever after. Forever. Are you bored yet? I am.

Yet plenty of little girls are still obsessed with princesses and being a princess. It might not appeal much to the grown-ups, but the trope remains strong – as does the lure of pretty things. (Personally, I still have to suppress a twinge of jealousy when I see a kid going by in a really good princess dress – with the layers of skirt and the faux-stays bodice and WHERE WERE THEY WHEN I WAS SMALL, HUH? – but it’s fine. I’m not jealous. I’m writing this wearing a £3 Claire’s Accessories tiara so it’s all OK.)

So, as it doesn’t look like we’ll escape the princess trope any time soon, it’s time to play with it instead. There’s no need to throw out the castles, dragons and bling along with the bathwater – there are plenty of good children’s books out there featuring kickass princesses who do more than just wear dresses. In this post, the first of a three parter, I’m going to give you the lowdown on some good princess role models for your sprogs/selves (delete as age-appropriate).

Disclaimer before we begin:
These books are primarily working from the Western European fairy tale trope, so whilst they may kick ass, some elements remain disappointingly similar throughout – namely that the princesses are often ‘conventionally beautiful’, often blonde, always Caucasian, and in this selection the tales all revolve around the marriage trope. I hope to uncover a wider variety of ass-kicking later, but in the meantime here are some nonetheless very good children’s books.

The Paper Bag Princess

• Written by Robert Munsch and illustrated by Michael Martchenko, published in 1980 by Annick Press

The Paper Bag Princess is a short, snappy children’s book aimed at the 3-5 age group. (Click here to hear it read to you by a kindly librarian.)

The book begins with a typical princess called Elizabeth who “lived in a castle and wore expensive princess clothes”. She plans to marry Prince Ronald, but when a dragon steals away the prince and scorches all the kingdom (including all her pretty clothes) she doesn’t waste a moment: she dons the eponymous paper bag (the only unscorched thing she could wear) and goes off to rescue her man, defeating the dragon using her wits.

Munsch has explained that he wrote the book on his wife’s suggestion:

One day my wife, who also worked at the daycare centre, came to me and said “How come you always have the prince save the princess? Why can’t the princess save the prince?” I thought about that and changed around the ending of one of my dragon stories. That made the adults a lot happier, and the kids did not mind.

(Of course the kids didn’t mind – they don’t have such strong pre-conceived ideas of narrative yet!)

But as well as the princess doing the rescuing, there’s also a brilliant message about self-esteem and moving on. The Prince, once rescued, turns out to be an ungrateful asshat, telling Elizabeth off for looking a mess: “Come back when you look like a real princess.” Upon hearing this the princess doesn’t get upset or angry. She tells the prince, “Your clothes are really pretty and your hair is very neat. You look like a real prince but you are a bum.” (or a toad if you have the UK version). The final line – “they didn’t get married after all” – is illustrated with the Paper Bag Princess dancing off into the sunset.

This book is a brilliant, simple primer for just about everyone. It teaches people that being brave, smart and kind are more important than how you look – and that when someone is mean to you, you can be the bigger person walk away. That’s a double-helix of kickass for all genders, packed into a very short picture book.

Princess Smartypants

• Written and illustrated by Babette Cole, pub. Hamish Hamilton 1986

Babette Cole has done a lot of awesome for children’s literature. Her drawings are warm, funny and just more than a bit gorgeous, and she’s also subverted Cinderella in Prince Cinders (and done plenty more amazing children’s books, but I’ll focus on this one.)

(Once again, you can have this book read to you on YouTube.)

Princess Smartypants (Best. Name. Ever.) is content with her own life: “She enjoyed being a Ms. Because she was pretty and rich, all the princes wanted her to be their Mrs.” Ten points to Cole for slipping in the Miss/Ms/Mrs thing in a fairly small, light way. Minus ten for having a princess who is both pretty and blonde.

However, wanting to put an end to the constant stream of suitors once and for all, Princess Smartypants says she will marry whoever can accomplish all the tasks she sets. This is where it gets badass – her tasks show her interests: gardening (an extreme sport when you see the slugs); feeding her monster pets; roller disco; motorbike riding – you get the idea. Princess Smartypants is accomplished, independent, and happy getting up to the stuff she enjoys.

Eventually Prince Swashbuckle does manage all the tasks, so this is where Princess Smartypants uses her plothammer card and turns him into a toad. Grumpy toad prince drives away in his red sports car, and no princes bother her again. (My plot spill is nothing without the illustrations – for the love of God, READ THIS BOOK.)

As with The Paper Bag Princess, the final frame page of this book combines the news that the protagonist doesn’t get married with an illustration of her looking very happy – in this instance, on a sun lounger, toasting the audience with a glass of something, and surrounded by her monster pets.

The message from both of these books is that you can create your own happily ever after.

The Practical Princess

• From The Practical Princess And Other Liberating Fairy Tales by Jay Williams, Scholastic 1978

Princess Bedelia is given common sense as a baby by a visiting fairy (the other two fairies bestow the more expected gifts of beauty and grace), despite her father’s complaint of “What good is common sense to a princess? All she needs is charm.”

However, when a hungry dragon demands Bedelia to eat and a dragon slayer can’t be found soon enough, the King and his advisors decide they’ll have to give her over to be eaten. Our girl takes control of her own fate with a kind of weary resignation when she realises no one else is up to the task. She makes a dummy from straw and one of her finest gowns, and stuffs it with gunpowder. Bye bye dragon.

When a powerful but age-inappropriate and unwanted suitor turns up, Bedelia sets him near-impossible tasks using her extensive knowledge of the surrounding kingdoms – and uses her sense to catch him out when he cheats. When our girl winds up in a tower with a male Rapunzel/Sleeping Beauty-type prince, she uses her common sense to undo the spell he is under, and rescue them both.

This story isn’t my favourite of the lot – I found the heroine very slightly prissy, and the details and language didn’t really warm my cockles. However, the moral of the story is pretty much ‘don’t panic, keep thinking, you’ll find a solution’, and ain’t no arguing with that. Hip-hip hooray for brains!

The Wrestling Princesss

• From The Wrestling Princess and Other Stories, written by Judy Corbalis, illustrated by Helen Craig, 1986, pub. Andre Deutsch

The Wrestling Princess takes place in a world where some gender roles are set in stone, but some are very altered. Princess Ermyntrude is either wrestling the guards or covered in axle grease, working on her tractors and helicopters – but the King tells her she has to find a husband for the succession. The princess’s resistance and her father’s weary insistence make for a good introduction to the debate on succession. Also, Ermyntrude’s father naming the ‘feminine’ traits she needs sets them up to be deconstructed/dismissed:

“To get a husband you must be enchantingly beautiful, dainty and weak,” said the king.
“Well, I’m not,” said Ermyntrude cheerfully. “I’m nothing to look at, I’m six feet tall and I’m certainly not weak. Why, Father, did you hear, this morning I wrestled with sixteen guards at once and I defeated them all?”
“Ermyntrude!” said the king sternly, as he rethreaded his needle with No. 9 blue tapestry cotton. “Ermyntrude, we are not having any more wrestling and no more forklift trucks either. If you want a husband you will have to become delicate and frail.”
“I don’t want a husband,” said the princess and she stamped her foot hard.

The ensuing prince/groom casting-call both plays to some gender norms (it’s a rule that the prince must be taller than her) and some non-norms (the prince must be able to match her in a face-pulling contest).

This princess does eventually get married, but to a short prince who has a shared love of mechanics and loves her for who she is, and vice versa.

“You’re too short,” said the king.
“He’s not,” said the princess.
“No, I’m not, I’m exactly right and so is she,” said Prince Florizel. “Then when I saw her pulling faces and shouting insults and throwing princes to the ground I knew she was the one person I could fall in love with.”
“Really?” asked the princess.
“Truly,” said Prince Florizel. “Now, come and see my mechanical digger.”

In this book, unlike the previous two, marriage doesn’t turn out to be a thing to be avoided – provided it’s with the right person. This story is about deconstructing the existing framework of helpless princesses and dashing princes – and it also becomes about two quirky, likeable people meeting and falling in love. And falling in love is totally punk rock.

Honourable mention: The Practical Princess

• Written by Rebecca Lisle, illustrated by Joëlle Dreidemy, pub. Andersen 2008

I actually picked this one up by accident when friends were singing the praises of the other Practical Princess book (see above) – but I thought it would be worth comparing and contrasting these different practical princesses.

This book is far more recent than most on this list (the others all being from the 1980s), and it is not particularly feminist, but it does play with the trope a little.

Having read it, I’m not quite sure why this one has the name: Molly, our protagonist, is only a bit practical and she’s not actually a princess. Molly is an ordinary (read: extraordinarily beautiful, but non-royal) girl who wants to be a princess, so she enters a casting-call to find Prince Percival a bride. Her farmer parents help her by making and buying pretty clothes and shoes at great expense, and her lovely boyfriend Stan makes her a crown.

That’s right, she has a boy back home who loves her already, and – though he doesn’t want her to go – he helps her because she has her heart set on becoming a princess. He even drives her to the competition. POOR LOVELY STAN.

I don’t want to go overboard in my criticisms/analysis of children’s books here (not like the Freudian interpretation of The Cat in the Hat – no, that would be silly) but ignoring her current relationship is massively problematic for me. As is the remarkably unsisterly attitude Molly displays towards the other (real) princesses in the competition. They’re all painted as vacuous fashion victims, but I find this attitude in the writing to be uncharitable and a little lazy – as if the other competitors’ one-dimensionality will add more depth to the protagonist by default.

That said, to give her her due, our girl does realize over the course of the book that there isn’t much to recommend becoming royalty and that Stan back home is kinder and cuter than Prince Percival. When the glass slippers moment happens, Molly sticks her toes out so the shoe doesn’t fit, and defenestrates herself to escape back to her old life and lovely, long-suffering Stan.

The plus points for this book are it has a trajectory which begins in the same place as a lot of the readers (‘I’m not a princess but I want to be one’), and the conclusion – that riches and status are hollow compared to people who really care about you – is pretty universal and good. I just wish there’d been less mention of tiny waists throughout the book (no girl ever needs more indoctrination on that shit) – and our protagonist doesn’t really ‘kick ass’ so much as ‘avoids falling into the same traps as the other women.’

Also: poor Stan! You’re not good enough for him, Molly. I’ll take him off your hands.

• There will be more kickass and subversive princesses from children’s books in future articles. Hannah has a few on the list, but if there are any you think she should know about/make sure she doesn’t miss then let us know in the comments section!

Very quietly, in April, a study was published that found that in American children’s books published between 1900 and 2000, female characters were under-represented by a ratio of 1.6:1. Not much happened. Then, at the beginning of this month, the Guardian wrote it up, and the Daily Mail tried their best to misrepresent it, failing to note the criteria used, representing the research as if it had been conducted in the UK, and generally being, well, a bit Daily Mail about the whole thing.

Two things then happened. The lovely lovely Daily Mail comments section went mad with people declaring (presumably based on the many years of research that each of them had done) that the results were clearly rubbish and anyway a bit of sexism never did me any harm now get in the kitchen and put my tea on. The Guardian‘s commenters largely ignored the piece, or said ‘no shit, Sherlock’ and went back to what they were doing before. So far, so par for the course.

But this lack of inquisitive attention is wrong for two reasons: first, this is a massive undertaking, so, y’know, kudos; secondly, these findings are Important. Important enough to use a capital ‘I’: at a time when children are developing their own gender identities, their literature both represents and defines what is expected of them. We need to know what those expectations are; the expectations that come not from our own choice of books for our children, but from what the literary establishment deems ‘good’ award winners are – rightly or wrongly – arbiters of taste, gatekeepers of acceptability. So when a study comes along that pays particular attention to, amongst other things, a century-worth of Caldecott Medal winners, we should be sitting up and taking notice.

Children’s books, and books in general, are not here-today-gone-tomorrow entities; they persist. In short, voices from both the distant and recent past are telling our children that women are simply not as important as men.

I’m not going to blather on about why it’s important for the message of gender of equality to be strong in the cradle and the classroom, nor why the repression of female characters in children’s fiction reinforces patriarchal gender systems, because if you’re over at BadRep you probably already know (and if you don’t, plenty has been written on the subject before).

I am going to blather on about why on earth this disparity between the genders hasn’t changed very much in a century.

So, let us return to the statistics. Since the early 1970s, studies have repeatedly found girls and women to be under-represented in children’s fiction, and this latest one is no different. It finds that in central roles male characters have a representation of 57 percent, and female characters only 31 percent. Significantly, it notes that “no more than 33 percent of books published in a year contain central characters who are adult women or female animals, whereas adult men and male animals appear in up to 100 percent”. You can get a free PDF of the whole study, by Janice McCabe, Emily Fairchild, and others from universities in Florida and Indiana, here or read the abstract here.

Not only are there fewer female characters in books in the first place, but “reader response research suggests that as children read books with male characters, their preferences for male characters are reinforced, and they will continue reaching for books that feature boys, men, and male animals”. This disparity of gender representation is made even more significant when we learn that boys redefine female protagonists with whom they identify as secondary characters¹ and recast secondary male characters as central when retelling the same stories². Educators, too, make a distinction between the genders when choosing appropriate literature for their classes, opting for stories with male protagonists more frequently than female even when their self-reported politics would suggest they do otherwise. ³

It is worth mentioning at this stage that the numerical representation of the genders and the stereotypicality of the behaviours those genders present are separate issues, and while the latter is fascinating in all sorts of ways, it is a large enough arena of study to warrant a separate post.

Children’s literature is particularly sensitive to sociopolitical forces. It’s probably not surprising, then, that this study finds spikes in the parity of gender representations coinciding with the second – and third – waves of feminism, so the books published in the 1930s-1960s show less gender parity than those published before and after, and more equal representation of the genders in books published after 1970.

Take this graph – Ratios of Males to Females, Overall Central Characters, Child Central Characters, and Animal Central Characters across the full set of 5,618 books the study analysed, spanning a century from 1900-2000:

These peaks and troughs in the equality of gender representation paint a worrying picture. When the feminist movement is active, female and male characters do move towards a parity of representation. But when feminism goes off the boil, so does gender equality.

What does this mean for the futures of feminism? Are we destined to keep pushing the message, safe in the knowledge that it will be quickly unlearned if we stop? We cannot rest on our laurels. The third wave feminist movement has, arguably, made feminism more accessible, and this can only be a good thing. But history teaches us that we need to take the waves out of feminism, to keep working, to question inequality whenever we see it mindful that old habits die hard.

“Ending discrimination”, says Kat Banyard in her book The Equality Illusion, “will require a no less than a total transformation of society at every level: international, national, local and individual.” Our children’s books are an indication of this, and a litmus test by which progress can be measured.

You can find more musings on various aspects of kid lit over at my blog TreasuryIslands, including an ongoing series on feminism for beginners with heaps of recommendations. Meanwhile, here are a few of my fabulous feminist favourites.

Totally awesome feminist children’s books:

Princess Pigsty by Cornelia Funke, illustrated by Kerstin Meyer, translated by Chantal Wright
Isabella doesn’t like being a princess. She doesn’t like being waited on, she doesn’t like smiling all day and she doesn’t like her pretty frocks. She’s had enough. Throwing her crown into a pond, she awaits her punishment from the king, but when he sends her to live in a pigsty, the results are far from what he expected…

Captain Abdul’s Pirate School by Colin McNaughton

Pickles is a pupil at pirate school. A reluctant student, Pickles learns how to talk like a pirate, make cannon balls, fight and get up to all the mischief expected of a pirate at sea. Leading a mutiny against the teachers, Pickles shows bravery, cunning and compassion.

Only on the last of the book’s 32 pages is Pickles revealed to be a girl named Maisie.

Katie Morag Delivers the Mail by Dr Mairi Hedderwick

With a little help from her dungaree-wearing, tractor-driving granny, Katie Morag delivers the mixed up post on the Scottish island where she lives. She’s a great young heroine with a seriously badass gran.

Give Us The Vote! by Sue Reid

Based on the true story of Dora Thewlis, 16-year-old suffragette. A Yorkshire mill worker, Thewlis took part in a mission to break into the Houses of Parliament in early 1907. She was arrested and imprisoned, a move which found her on the front page of the tabloids nicknamed ‘the baby suffragette’. Part of the My True Story series, Give Us the Vote! is an excellent lesson in first wave feminism.

Libby earned her feminist stripes interning for the Fawcett Society where she was horrified by most of the stories she heard. An accidental activist, she is a regular contributor to BCN, the UK’s only 100% bisexual publication. Her latest project, TreasuryIslands, is the home of her other passion – children’s literature.

Libby is very proud of her bad reputation.

1. a finding by Elizabeth Segel, whose 1986 work is referenced in the study.
2. Bronwyn Davies noted this in her 2003 book Frogs and snails and feminist tales: Preschool children and gender, and it’s also referenced.
3. Deborah A. Garrahy’s 2001 study “Three Third-Grade Teachers’ Gender-Related Beliefs and Behavior” is worth a look for more on this, in The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 81-94.

This old thing?

She has a dizzying list of titles to her name, of which I managed to snatch only a portion: most people have heard of Ballet Shoes, and, for many, it was a defining childhood book. It’s a critics’ and writers’ pet: (Dame) Jacqueline Wilson cites it as her “all-time favourite children’s book”, and the BBC has twice adapted it for television. Lots of people also know about the other ‘Shoes’ books: Dancing Shoes, White Boots, Tennis Shoes, Ballet Shoes for Anna and the Carnegie award-winning The Circus Is Coming, but maybe less are familiar with The Children of Primrose Lane, Party Shoes, the Gemma books, or Caldicott Place. Certainly, her considerable output of books for adults has largely gone unnoticed (one of which formed the basis for Ballet Shoes itself) and I myself have only read one: Saplings, an experimental novel that explores contemporary thought about child psychology in the aftermath of war. Somewhat disturbingly, it is still written from Streatfeild’s distinctive ‘child’s-eye-view’, from which vantage point it addresses issues as varied as depression, alcoholism, sex, bed-wetting, bereavement and female self-esteem (not all at once, of course).

We Three Fossils... The Fossil Vow, illustrated by Streatfeild's sister, Ruth Gervis

It has been often commented that Streatfeild’s gift is her ability to establish a rapport with her reader: she never talks down to children, and deals with difficult topics in the same way she describes everyday occurrences. Her commitment to realism in writing extends to her habit of painstakingly explaining what all the characters are thinking at all times. Thus, in Dancing Shoes, the just-orphaned Rachel is considered unloving and aggressive because she took her mother’s death with equanimity: we the readers, on the other hand, are kept aware of Rachel’s trials – how she scowls to keep from crying and wants to avoid any questions that might set her off. The child-reader is nevertheless forced to see the situation from at least two perspectives simultaneously, a common approach to Literature since Samuel Richardson, but amazingly innovative in writing for children. The result is a style that demands a responsibility from its readers as well as understanding: it accepts that life is often unfair, but invites children to consider how best to respond.

Streatfeild was famously the ‘unattractive’ middle girl in a clergyman’s family of three daughters. After the ‘beautiful child’ tradition of nineteenth-century children’s literature (best represented by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Lewis Carroll), her novels frequently focus on the rebellious, the stubborn and the plain, than which no better example exists than the ‘black-doggish’ Jane Winter in The Painted Garden, which meta-fictionally reworks Hodgson Burnett’s most famous novel on a film set in Hollywood. In the absence of naive beauty and idyllic country settings, her characters must make their way on merit, and, not only plain, they are often money-minded to a startling degree: “The law lets me work; I don’t need a licence, and I can do what I like with my own money,” asserts Pauline, in Ballet Shoes, at fourteen (and she gets her way).

Dr Jakes and Dr Smith, by Ruth Gervis.

The central conceit of this novel – the absence of Great Uncle Matthew (“Gum”), who adopts the three ‘Fossils’ and then dashes off to “some strange islands” – means that the book features an essentially all-female cast. Aside from the Fossils themselves – Pauline, Petrova and Posy – the house in Cromwell Road also contains Sylvia, the children’s guardian (“Garnie”); Nana, a no-nonsense disciplinarian; Theo Dane, a dancing teacher at the Children’s Academy of Dancing and Stage Training, and Dr Smith and Dr Jakes, doctors of Maths and English respectively. These last two later move on to “a charming flat in Bloomsbury” and although aged seven I never thought to ask why two female doctors should have to live together, now I wonder if Streatfeild has not rather audaciously put a lesbian couple in a 1930s kids’ book (there are some rumours about the nature of the friendships she shared with women herself, and she has been claimed variously for a lesbian and an asexual). Certainly the illustration of the Doctors by Ruth Gervis suggests she saw it that way, even if Streatfeild may not have done: they are depicted in a stereotypical style that has barely changed since the novel was written in 1936.

The only man in sight, apart from the absent Gum, is Mr Simpson, a border who teaches Petrova all about cars and then must go back to his ‘rubber trees’ in Kuala Lumpur. And while Pauline and Posy have looks and interests to endear them to the most pink and fluffy reader going, Petrova remains as stubbornly boyish as that perennially scruffy heroine of female fiction, Little Women‘s Jo: when the dancing school plan is first mentioned, Nana hopes it will “turn her more like a little lady” – Petrova “never plays with dolls, and takes no more interest in her clothes than a scarecrow”.

Alas for Nana, Petrova ends up spending auditions “flying an imaginary airplane on a new route to China”, and by the end of the book, is a determined aviator: “Amy Mollison and Jean Batten will be [in the history books], but not as important at you”, promises Pauline, imagining the distinctly un-fluffy story such books will tell: ‘[She] found routes by which goods could be carried at greater speed and less cost, and so she revolutionized trade.” Hardly the dreams of a ‘beautiful child’.

For Petrova, as for so many of Streatfeild’s children not given to performing art (and there are a surprising number, despite her reputation), the most important lesson of stage school is self-sufficiency, a goal underlined across all the books by the fact that the overwhelming majority of child-characters have no parents to speak of, or are lumbered with a domineering guardian to struggle against (notably in Ballet Shoes For Anna and White Boots). With their realist emphasis, and the lessons that ‘even’ little girls can get on in a world assailed by stupidity, war, and even natural disasters, I can think of no better author to recommend to absolutely everyone you know.