{"id":79290,"date":"2018-02-26T16:25:17","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T05:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=79290"},"modified":"2018-03-26T12:31:52","modified_gmt":"2018-03-26T01:31:52","slug":"nelly-thomas-blog-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2018\/02\/26\/nelly-thomas-blog-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Nelly Thomas: I do just enough to plant the seed."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Guest<\/p>\n

She’s one of Australia’s most natural and intelligent performers. Swinging fast and boldly between refined social satire and a guilty gorging on junk TV, you’d be hard pressed to find a more engaging, thought-provoking comedy experience. Of course we’re talking about Nelly Thomas.<\/p>\n

Having won the Triple J Raw Comedy competition in 2003, Nelly has spent her time ever since then not just as a comedian, but as a public speaker, health advocate and writer!<\/p>\n

What Women Want<\/i><\/a>\u00a0was Nelly’s first book and now she’s back with\u00a0Some Girls<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>showing girls everywhere that they can be whoever they want to be. Check out\u00a0Nelly’s guest blog post with us about\u00a0Some Girls.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Reading with Girls
\nBy Nelly Thomas<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conventional wisdom suggests that it\u2019s easier to get little girls to read than it is boys.<\/p>\n

To be honest, I\u2019m not sure why that is but it\u2019s pretty clear that girls generally read earlier and more frequently than boys. By adulthood, the stats even out but, in the early years, girls are often ahead of boys in this respect.<\/p>\n

However, while I\u2019d argue that reading rates among girls are great, I\u2019d caution that what<\/em> they\u2019re reading and how<\/em> they\u2019re reading could do with closer examination.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a wonderful explosion in \u201cGirl Power\u201d books over the last decade or so.<\/p>\n

My favourites are books like Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls<\/em><\/a>, The Paperbag Princess<\/em> and The World\u2019s Worst Princess<\/em>, and there are many others. There\u2019s A Mighty Girl and various campaigns to end gender-specific categorisation of children\u2019s books, and a push for kids\u2019 books to be more inclusive and diverse generally. However, any parent or carer of young children will still be struck by how entrenched rigid gender roles are in children\u2019s literature, even in 2018.<\/p>\n

Many children\u2019s books still show boys being active, high-energy and physical and girls as appearance-focussed, gentle and cerebral-emotional. Of course there are kids who fit these stereotypes, but many don\u2019t and none do completely. We also know that these ideas can become self-fulfilling \u2013 that they\u2019re at least equally learned as they are innate.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>What to do?<\/p>\n

Well, if you\u2019re me and you\u2019ve got a girl who doesn\u2019t confirm to gender stereotypes, you write her a book!<\/p>\n

My youngest daughter started getting teased for her short hair and awesomeness \u2013 she\u2019s boisterous, loud and her favourite things include Hulk and Power Rangers \u2013 at about the age of 3.<\/p>\n

After I recovered from my shock \u2013 IT\u2019S THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY \u2013 I found a number of books for her, but almost all of them were for older kids who were literate. Instead of waiting for her to learn to read, I wrote\u00a0Some Girls.\u00a0<\/em>It\u2019s a simple but beautiful picture book for kids 0-7 that aims to challenge gender and other stereotypes. There are girls in it who like pink and play with dolls, but there are also girls with short hair who like worms. There\u2019s a range of kids from different backgrounds and with different abilities. There are affirming messages, and the primary aim is to instil confidence in all girls, no matter who they are and what they like.<\/p>\n

Of course, not everyone is going to write a book.\"\"<\/p>\n

The other \u2013 much easier! \u2013 way to challenge rigid gender roles is to gently question stereotyping in your kids\u2019 books. If the book is The Magic Faraway Tree<\/em> (my favourite book of all time) I share all the joy about the land of Do-As-You-Please and the excitement about Dame Washalot\u2019s water soaking the kids, but when the boys are assumed to be protectors and the girls followers, I ask why. If the kids show interest in the question, I explain that people used to think boys and girls had strict roles but that we don\u2019t anymore. If all the kids are white, able-bodied and so on, I note that too.<\/p>\n

Similarly, if a boy is teased for crying or told to \u201ctoughen up\u201d, I say that ball boys cry and that no-one is tough all the time. If highly gendered language like \u201cfireman\u201d or \u201cpoliceman\u201d is used, I just edit it on the spot and say \u201cfirefighter\u201d or \u201cpolice officer\u201d. I don\u2019t necessarily go into why<\/em> or even talk about it, I just change it as I read. If the pictures<\/em> are all of men, I question it. I might say something like, \u201cthat\u2019s weird, there\u2019s no girls there\u201d and then move on. Most the time, I do just enough to plant the seed.<\/p>\n

To be clear, I allow my kids to read anything they want.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t scoff, dismiss or ban books that are highly stereotypical \u2013 but I do question them. This has the twin benefits of encouraging their reading but also developing the critical thinking skills they\u2019re going to need in the world.<\/p>\n

How do you read with girls?<\/p>\n

The same way you should read as an adult: will full-throated love and a very big question mark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She’s one of Australia’s most natural and intelligent performers. Swinging fast and boldly between refined social satire and a guilty gorging on junk TV, you’d be hard pressed to find a more engaging, thought-provoking comedy experience. Of course we’re talking about Nelly Thomas. Having won the Triple J Raw Comedy competition in 2003, Nelly has spent her time ever since then not just as a comedian, but as a public speaker, health advocate and writer! What Women Want\u00a0was Nelly’s first book and now she’s back with\u00a0Some Girls,\u00a0showing girls everywhere that they can be whoever they want to be. Check out\u00a0Nelly’s guest blog post with us about\u00a0Some Girls. Reading with Girls By Nelly Thomas Conventional wisdom suggests that it\u2019s easier to get little girls to read than it is boys. To be honest, I\u2019m not sure why that is but it\u2019s pretty clear that girls generally read earlier and more frequently than boys. By adulthood, the stats even out but, in the early years, girls are often ahead of boys in this respect. However, while I\u2019d argue that reading rates among girls are great, I\u2019d caution that what they\u2019re reading and how they\u2019re reading could do with closer examination. There\u2019s been…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":79293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[741,8458,978,993,1007,8579,2220,8582,2303,7394,8581,7966,8580],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Untitled-design-87.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79290"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79843,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79290\/revisions\/79843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}