As I was ruminating on Girls’ Books and Boys’ Books yesterday, I put the question to my Perfect Non-Reader: Are there Girl Books and Boy Books. She answered affirmatively without hesitation. When I asked for details, she thought a bit, but said that Girl Books were about princesses magic, and Boys’ Books were about fighting “and other rough stuff”. Hmm. I asked about a few other topics. Horses? Girl Book. Indians? Boy Book. Rockets? Boy Book. Buildings? Neutral. (I explained that that a book that was neither a Boy Book or a Girl Book could be called neutral<\/I>, and she responded that “yellow is a neutral color!” which, I then recalled, was a direct quote from a playground mother in regard to the Youngest Member’s cute little ducky hat. But I digress. Sorta.) I asked if girls could enjoy Boy Books, and boys enjoy Girl Books, and she effectively said duh, of course<\/I>. Then we moved on to individual books and series.\n
The Oz series are girl books. Charlotte’s Web<\/I> is neutral. The Droon<\/a> books are Boy Books, but the Magic Treehouse<\/a> books are neutral. Alice<\/I> is neutral. Which Witch<\/I> is neutral. The Just So Stories<\/I> are neutral. In fact, when we got down to specific books, it emerged that (a) she considers most books she reads to be neutral, and (2) the sex of the protagonist(s) is weighted very<\/I> heavily. So when asked generally<\/I> what makes a book a Girl Book, the sex of the protagonist didn’t come up, but when I asked specifically<\/I>, it was pretty nearly determinative. Although, there was the weird Alice<\/I> thing, because Alice<\/I> seems to me to be very much a Girls’ Book, but evidently not so much. Although I’m not sure she remembers Alice<\/I> very well, athough for a while it was her favorite book. So was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory<\/I>, now that I think about it, but I didn’t ask her whether it was a Boy Book.\n