Monday, February 7, 2011

Feminist books for children and young adults

There was a big hullabaloo in the book blogging world last week when Bitch Magazine published a list of 100 Young Adult titles for the Feminist Reader. I won't go into the drama here but I will sum it up briefly: there were a few reader complaints about the list which lead to Bitch removing three titles and admitting to the fact that maybe they hadn't necessarily read all the titles on the list in the first place, and then a whole lot of people got upset at the removal of the titles in question and-- well, if you want to lose a day to following the drama, you can, but I'm not going to perpetuate it here. Suffice to say, some very interesting debates arose around this issue and some very smart people furthered the discussion in fascinating ways. Sure, I have an opinion on the whole affair but, really, I'd rather be reading the books at this point in the game.

One thing that came out of the hullabaloo is that I learned about a long-standing blog/list that I'd never heard of before. It's called The Amelia Bloomer Project: Recommended Feminist Literature for Birth through 18. If you want to print out the project's 10 year collection of annual lists, click here. Keep in mind, you can also nominate books yourself, so don't be afraid to become part of the conversation. Now I am off to do a bit of list reading myself, with my library card at the ready.

3 comments:

  1. The discussion WAS fascinating, if way drawn out and at times a little nasty. And I hadn't heard about the Amelia Bloomer project, either, which I will be bookmarking for future reading myself now. (After this pile of books - and that one over there, and maybe even the one in the corner... sigh.)

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  2. Oooh, thanks for the Amelia Bloomer link. That's right up my alley.

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  3. Ah, nothing like having a back stage pass. Thanks, Sue.

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