So, I have been looking for potential books for my next dissertation for about 2 weeks, and today I spent a good 30 minutes in a high street books retailer looking for children's/young adult novels with female protagonists.
(Yes, I know it's cheaper to buy from Amazon, but I need to LOOK at the books, read inside, get a feel for the writing style, not just browse through a bunch of crap about what other people think of them. And it's 3 for 2 in High Street Books Retailer).
Anyway, wow. The display was bestselling and new books. I searched up and down, looking for stories about strong girls. Failing that, I then searched for stories that weren't about vampires. Then for the remaining stories that had female protagonists...
It was a disheartening sight. Sure, Sabriel was in there. But I needed a book that was published more recently. Books that looked promising turned out to have starring roles for boys. Books that had female main characters were, invariably, pink. With pictures of make up.
Sometimes it really seems the mainstream is so obsessed with getting boys to read that the ONLY adventure books worth publishing NEED to have male protagonists.
I have a meeting with my proposed supervisor at University for my masters this week, and I have little-to-nothing to take to her in the way of recently published empowered female characters. Who would have thought it could be so difficult to find?
So I'm throwing it out to the internetz: anyone, please, throw me the names of some books for age 11+, published between 2008 and 2010 that have one or more of the following conditions:
(Yes, I know it's cheaper to buy from Amazon, but I need to LOOK at the books, read inside, get a feel for the writing style, not just browse through a bunch of crap about what other people think of them. And it's 3 for 2 in High Street Books Retailer).
Anyway, wow. The display was bestselling and new books. I searched up and down, looking for stories about strong girls. Failing that, I then searched for stories that weren't about vampires. Then for the remaining stories that had female protagonists...
It was a disheartening sight. Sure, Sabriel was in there. But I needed a book that was published more recently. Books that looked promising turned out to have starring roles for boys. Books that had female main characters were, invariably, pink. With pictures of make up.
Sometimes it really seems the mainstream is so obsessed with getting boys to read that the ONLY adventure books worth publishing NEED to have male protagonists.
I have a meeting with my proposed supervisor at University for my masters this week, and I have little-to-nothing to take to her in the way of recently published empowered female characters. Who would have thought it could be so difficult to find?
So I'm throwing it out to the internetz: anyone, please, throw me the names of some books for age 11+, published between 2008 and 2010 that have one or more of the following conditions:
- female protagonist
- going on a quest/journey of discovery
- preferably fantasy
- NO VAMPIRE ROMANCES
