Summer Reading Challenge

Children are often liable to take you by surprise, aren't they? 

At the moment, we aren't using any kind of structured learning but we are doing lots of reading and taking advantage of every opportunity. In this environment, over past month, my little one has discovered something awesome.

The glee on her little face when she takes a book off me and says, "Now I'll read it to you mommy," eek! It still makes me grin.

She uses a number of techniques to help her read the story, but I don't think it involves the writing at all. It reminds me of the wordless books that I think form level one of The Oxford Reading Tree. It has also set off a chain reaction in my head of Awesome Things We Can Do Now.

So, how does she do it? 

Firstly, she chooses books that she knows well and recalls the exact words from memory, she uses inflection she's heard from us.

Then she looks at the pictures to jog her memory.

If she can't remember the exact words she sometimes gets frustrated, but she has recently tried substituting similar words (and received a lot of praise for thinking of that idea!)

She has also recalled and re-told the story of Peter Rabbit for me, without the book, in order to create our own little version of the story in a mini-book (thank you, zine-making obsession, I knew it would get me somewhere, even if I never made one of my own!)

This week, she used her new skills to finish her first book in the library Circus Stars challenge.

I'm so excited to see what happens next in our reading journey and I'll be updating the fun reading stuff we get up to on the way :)

Mini Book Review: Skullduggery Pleasant

In my quest for books to study I've been consuming a large amount of kids lit lately. Finally, I repeat, FINALLY, I found a book worth talking about.

Skullduggery Pleasant is about the eponymous dead detective and his (young, female) side-kick. And, whilst the female character is only supposed to be 12, the writing is mature and witty, something that I've found lacking in a number of other novels I've read lately. It's almost as if some writers think that language and comedy have to be dumbed down if a book is aimed at pre-teens. Not so for Derek Landy - his characters are truly brought to life through their thoroughly entertaining banter.

Stephanie, the young girl, has a boring life until Mr S.P. turns up, plunging her into a world full of magic and danger that she never knew existed, (you know this story, right?). Stephanie has few skills in the magic world, yet is determined to learn and develop her own abilities. She is served through most of the book by her stubbornness and ability to learn fast, but that's not to say that she doesn't need saving by her mentor on numerous occasions.

(Which is perfectly valid really, seeing as she's only 12 and has never fought freaky monsters before.)

S.P. as a character is witty, fun and mysterious, always allowing Stephanie to come along and do her part, but protecting her in the most dangerous situations. This might all seem a bit patriarchal, but surely a completely patriarchal S.P. would make Stephanie stay at home, out of harms way, not expose her to the risks of his unorthodox methods of detective work. Which would make a thoroughly boring story really, wouldn't it? There needs to be a balance between letting the female character have her own agency and giving a young, inexperienced character the chance to develop (and just being instantly awesome isn't very plausible or interesting, is it?)

Furthermore, Stephanie also has a corresponding female character to look up to, in the form of a mercenary assassin called Tanith. Strong, skilled and respected, Tanith bonds with Stephanie and also fights to protect her.

It's interesting to note that the jacket of the book has only a picture of Skullduggary Pleasant, no other characters. The blurb doesn't really emphasise the female protagonist. This is a book aimed at the widest audience it can possibly get. It is also blatantly the start of a series, where Stephanie is going to grow and develop (hopefully) into a powerful mage.

I see this as a fantastic start, the characters of Tanith and Stephanie are begging to be filled out and developed into kick-ass, awesome women and S.P. is fabulous comic relief and an all around bad-ass. The dialogue is mature and fun and the story line is gripping. I need more.

Fictional role models for young girls?

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:

• female protagonist
• going on a quest/journey of discovery
• preferably fantasy
• NO VAMPIRE ROMANCES
  

Thanks!