This week, after many years, I decided to brave the crowds and visit the Colombo International Book Fair. As I perused stall by stall and watched my pile of books grow, I was taken back to the yearly pilgrimage that I would make to the same fair as a child with my father. We would come early after breakfast and spend hours combing through sections, particularly used books that were hard to find in any other circumstances. It was here that my father introduced me to Tintin, his personal favourite as a child. We found rare illustrated copies of What Katy Did and old magazines that had long gone out of print. The book fair wasn’t the only time books were a central part of our lives. For years, our routine on Saturday mornings would involve us being dropped off at the Young Learners section (as it was then called) of the British Council Library and being picked up at lunch time, armed with as many books to be checked out as we were allowed. This was one of the few advantages as a child of having three siblings – the borrowing capacity as a family was far more generous. Here, I discovered Jaqueline Wilson, Quentin Blake, and other authors that still colour how I see the world today. We were encouraged to read everything and anything, with the only caveat being that they were age-appropriate as far as one could ascertain. We ploughed through the famous classics such as Moby Dick, Little Women, and The Secret Garden, and as my parents travelled, I discovered the treasure trove of South African, Indian, Norwegian, and other children’s authors. I didn’t realise that books could be gendered until I was much older and discussing reading and children’s authors with some female friends who were avid readers themselves. They confessed to never having read Tom Sawyer – interrupting my happy pontification of comparing Katy Carr from What Katy Did to him – and were met with my utter disbelief. Upon questioning and discussing, I realised that books like Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Moby Dick were considered suitable reading for boys and as such were often purchased with this in mind. ‘Girly’ books I wondered if this was the same for boys and did a little investigating among my male contemporaries. To my dismay, this rang true; many of them were not given or encouraged to read books considered feminine, including the Anne of Green Gables series, The Secret Garden, etc. In fact, some male friends who had stumbled upon these books hid their love for them for fear of being teased for liking “girly” books. Some read them in adulthood and when they asked why they were not given them as children, the answers were more or less the same. The assumption was that a book with a female protagonist would not appeal to them. This was true even for boys who read openly and voraciously as children. This truly devastated me on a deep level; I felt like my friends had been robbed of something intangible but vital. What matters is not what gender the protagonist is, but the quality of the story and its power to inspire. Each of these books has a unique quality, a specific learning opportunity, and a chance to further cement the love of words. It also shows young children that as boys and girls at the core, we all share very similar things. Just as Tom Sawyer can be wild and fractious, so can Katy Carr. As Oliver Twist can be wide-eyed and sympathy-inducing, so can Sarah Crewe. As Moby Dick can have your heart race and palms sweat, so can The Swiss Family Robinson. Books have the power to break stereotypes that we so often force on children and show them a world where anything is possible. It truly saddens me that even within this we have created a gendered divide. This is not limited to how parents select or adults gift books; it is also deeply influenced by the way books are marketed by publishers. Many books suggest the gender of their reader by the time we have picked it up and looked at the cover. “Best book for boys/girls” and “boys/girls are going to love this story” are blurbed on the back cover in the promotional material by the sales agent who makes recommendations to you and advertisements. I’m guessing some expert at the publishing house thought about how to best market this particular book to maximise sales. But these are stories, so why potentially limit your audience like this (or your potential profit, for that matter), I wonder? Children have no sense of what they should and shouldn’t like based on their gender, and without this constraint, all kids would read everything. As Kristen Ploetz writes in her blog: “Imagine if publishers created novel covers for adults that said ‘best book for women!’ or ‘men are going to love this story’. I expect there would be backlash, yet it seems acceptable for children. With this book (that my daughter picked up and put back saying the cover said it was for boys), the publisher’s website indicates that at least one theme of this book revolves around social struggles and bullying in middle school. Is this not a topic that potentially touches every child and not just boys? Can’t they all learn from and be entertained by this book?” Our children are listening, reading, and playing and they want toymakers, authors, and publishers to do better. Remember the girls, and the gender queer, and the boys. Better yet, do away with all this binary classification and marketing and just say “children” or “teens”. Let them decide what they like and what they don’t. By limiting the potential of what they can access, we are doing nothing more than limiting many magical worlds for them to explore, lessons of empathy for them to learn, and more books to get joy from. Photo © The New Yorker