From time to time, I get an e-mail or a comment from male readers who enjoyed my goblin books, but are hesitant to pick up Stepsister Scheme or Mermaid’s Madness because they look like they’re for girls.
It’s bad enough we still try to force people into fairly rigid gender roles. Do we really have to do it to books too?
My eight year old son has gotten into the Nancy Drew books. Officially, he says he just started reading them, but unofficially I think it's due to the Nancy Drew computer games that my oldest has.
Having read some of the Hardy Boys books, I can say that the Nancy Drew books are more accessible, so I can see the appeal. He definitely doesn't view the Nancy Drew books as 'girls books' (believe me, we'd know if he does), so I think there's still hope for the future.
In a nutshell, the princess series is about:
Fighting and magic and family and fairies and revenge and unrequited love and requited love and hairy trolls and sailing and a three-legged cat and flying horses and wolves and drunk pixies and sewer goblins and enchanted swords and mermaids and friendship and ghosts and strong women and not-so-strong women and also some men and birds and rats and lots of ass-kicking.Gotta love the drunk Pixies
( ... )
Drunk pixies make everything better! (I should add some to book four ... this one could use some more levity.)
"I believe that the Princess books are not some sort of feminist manifesto or 'girls club' type of books; they're just really good stories and they have three female leads."
Good. That's what I want people to take away from them. I can understand where the act of making the three leads female could be taken as feminist, because it's not really the norm, but the most important thing has always been to try to tell a good story.
I'd say the Princess books are feminist in that they show that women are equal to men, capable of both 'masculine' and 'feminine' things, and pass the Bechdel Test without breaking a sweat. On the other hand, they aren't a manifesto, in that they don't need to preach to you that 'girls are equal to boys' or that 'sex discrimination is wrong', they just show it by having characters like Dani, Snow and Talia (and many supporting cast members) give lie to the idea that women or 'womanly things' (like Dani's (or Bea's) motherhood) are inherently weak or lesser.
Re: Two editions...zornhauDecember 15 2009, 14:48:30 UTC
No, but perhaps you should... :)
Or maybe a really very talented cover artist who can somehow convey both "Empowered Princesses" to the girls, and hint at "Hot chicks who might get it on with each other" to the boys.
My guys recently read stepsister and mermaid in quick succession as bedtime stories. They seemed to enjoy them just fine. Glen is just as worried about girl cooties as any boy, but he doesn't seem to have any objection to reading stories about girls or princesses or whatever. I think the "boys won't read" thing is a myth.
I definitely don't want this to come off as me saying ALL boys have this reaction. I've run into more guys who enjoyed the books than I have guys who refuse to be seen in public reading them. But I do get the latter reaction from time to time, and it bugs me.
You know, I hesitated on picking up those books because of the Charlie's Angels comparisons, and I love fairy tale rewrites. And mermaids!
Of course, once I did finally get past the "fairy tale princesses meets Charlie's Angels" comparison (due to desperately needing something to read one day), I stopped doing everything else and zoomed through both books in two days.
Totally awesome novels. And if they're "girly" books, in that they deal with emotions and feelings, then, yes, there's that, but there's plenty of action too. Which is just as girly, damn it, since I'm a girl and I like action.
Oh heck yes. I hadn't completely thought it through when I wrote the first book, but as soon as I started Mermaid I realized I needed to go somewhere with those two. I wasn't 100% sure where, but I couldn't just let it stagnate.
So while I won't tell you what's going to happen, I promise I'm going *somewhere* with it :-)
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My eight year old son has gotten into the Nancy Drew books. Officially, he says he just started reading them, but unofficially I think it's due to the Nancy Drew computer games that my oldest has.
Having read some of the Hardy Boys books, I can say that the Nancy Drew books are more accessible, so I can see the appeal. He definitely doesn't view the Nancy Drew books as 'girls books' (believe me, we'd know if he does), so I think there's still hope for the future.
In a nutshell, the princess series is about:
Fighting and magic and family and fairies and revenge and unrequited love and requited love and hairy trolls and sailing and a three-legged cat and flying horses and wolves and drunk pixies and sewer goblins and enchanted swords and mermaids and friendship and ghosts and strong women and not-so-strong women and also some men and birds and rats and lots of ass-kicking.Gotta love the drunk Pixies ( ... )
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"I believe that the Princess books are not some sort of feminist manifesto or 'girls club' type of books; they're just really good stories and they have three female leads."
Good. That's what I want people to take away from them. I can understand where the act of making the three leads female could be taken as feminist, because it's not really the norm, but the most important thing has always been to try to tell a good story.
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Or maybe a really very talented cover artist who can somehow convey both "Empowered Princesses" to the girls, and hint at "Hot chicks who might get it on with each other" to the boys.
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Of course, once I did finally get past the "fairy tale princesses meets Charlie's Angels" comparison (due to desperately needing something to read one day), I stopped doing everything else and zoomed through both books in two days.
Totally awesome novels. And if they're "girly" books, in that they deal with emotions and feelings, then, yes, there's that, but there's plenty of action too. Which is just as girly, damn it, since I'm a girl and I like action.
Also? Talia/Snow FTW. :)
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"Also? Talia/Snow FTW."
Heh. I'm *very* interested in seeing how readers react to that relationship as it develops over the third and fourth books :-)
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So while I won't tell you what's going to happen, I promise I'm going *somewhere* with it :-)
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