the daring book for girls

Friday, November 9, 2007

Though my daughter is only three, I’m the type who’s been building her “character-building” library for years already. I’m not talking about just books either—toys, music, you name it, I’ve strived since before her birth to make sure she’s surrounded by diverse, positive images, ones that reinforce the idea that societal roles and stereotypes based on her membership in certain categories—gender, race, etc.—should have no dominion over who and what she becomes. The first toy I bought her, in utero, was a “Little Frida Kahlo” stuffed doll. Her bookshelves are crammed with all the children’s books I can find with positive portrayals of people of color and girls and women, even books she won’t touch for years after she starts reading.

So of course, I jumped when the Parent Bloggers Network offered up The Daring Book for Girls for review. I had given The Dangerous Book for Boys to my tween nephew, and though I loved the concept and the follow-through, I was among the many parents of daughters going, uh, what’s up with that? I am so happy that Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz saw that book as an opportunity and an inspiration rather than just an example of imbalance.

Can I just say, first off, how happy I am that the cover isn’t pink? That’s just awesome, and sets the tone for what you’ll find inside. I’ve always loved take-offs on handbooks and almanacs-of-random-stuff, the look, the feel, the way you’ll never know what’s on the next page and how whatever it is will be accompanied by cool, retro line drawings. That’s what you get here, themed under the rubric of cool stuff to know and neat adventures to have for people who just happen to be girls.

It’s girl power packaged for a generation of parents who are tired of having to counteract all the negative images of femaleness that comes at our daughters at every age, but don’t want to have to bash people, let alone our own daughters, over the head with “lessons” all the time. I don’t want to even think about the issues of tween- and teenagehood—I’m still dealing with commercials for magical talking kitchens that sell the fantasy of ’50’s domesticity to a brand new market and trucks explicitly marketed for boys only, like they weren’t implicitly being sold like that before anyway.

I can’t wait until I can just hand my daughter this book and she can flip through from historical accounts of women pirates (she loves pirates!) and ancient queens to how-to’s on everything from basketball basics (because, unfortunately, she ain’t gonna get that from me!) to public speaking to investing. Yes, investing. The best part about the sheer variety of activities is that it speaks to all kinds of personalities at a time in their lives when they’re still trying on identities and figuring out who they are and who they want to be.

As the book’s website says, “The Daring Book for Girls is the essential manual for everything that girls need to know—and that doesn't mean sewing buttonholes! Whether readers consider themselves girly-girls, brainiacs, athletes, or a little bit of everything, this book is the girl's invitation to 21st century

adventure.” It’s a book of possibilities in a world of roles and limitations, and it’s what I want to give my daughter to have on her bookshelf as she grows up and takes on that biggest adventure—creating and defining (and recreating and redefining) herself.

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