Lovejoy Is For Real!

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The jury is still out as to whether this book is not about what it says it's about or it's not about what the reader interpreted from the cover that it was going to be about. Phew! Say that five times fast! Sorry about that, been reading too many Pauline letters.
The title might mislead one into thinking it's some sort of self-help book: the power of thinking without thinking. Hmmmm. What it shows is that there is a difference between expert opinion developed over years of study that sums up a new situation in a blink and what is patently just stereotyping out of ignorance. Black person [blink!:] baaad! Lovejoy (fictional antiques "divvie" and crime solver) looks at something from someone's basement [blink!:] genuine treasure!
The lesson here is that you can override your best instincts if you want something to be true or you can overcome your worst instincts and make the world a better place. You choice is being gulled into buying hugely expensive but worthless stuff and killing innocent people. It's all up to you! Take your pick.
The author also discovered that, despite his black heritage, he carries the baggage of negative associations with being black. You can't help it when you are immersed in what is predominantly white culture. (I pulled a quote on this when I was reading that should show up.)

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Bride of Son of Children's Literature Conference

Prepare to have your childhood ruined!

The last session I have notes on was "Cinderelly: Magical anecdotes for addressing gender in children's literature." How many of us thought we were supposed to wait for Prince Charming, eh? This session was about book selection, but raises awareness for storytimes as well.
Rachelle, one gorgeous and charismatic woman, enjoins us to consider a child's self-image in selecting books. I wonder what books she read growing up ... Is it too late for me?
Society, Rachelle tells us, cites gender (she means "sex" but for some reason people giggle when you use that word) as binary; what is masculine is not feminine and vice versa. Yes, well, people seem to do this to everything for some reason. Maybe it's just a western thing to use the binary model. You are either to the left or the right. Things are up or down. Everything has an opposite. But that isn't the way things are. There is a continuum between these so-called opposites. HyPOthyroid is the opposite of hyPERthyroid ... but in between them is a grey area called healthy. And it can be a pretty big area. So there might be masculine and feminine, but most of us live in that big continuum between them. If a girl is good at math but has no interest in sewing or cooking, should she be stigmatized by a stereotype from the far end of the continuum? If a boy loves pink or babies (my dad, a former track star and wrestler, loved babies when he was a boy and goes all twee over small children even now), should we kick him in the pants and tell him to go watch some football?
Even among europeans, how many truly blonde and blue-eyed (in the middle ages, they were called grey-eyed) types are there? Sure, all those blonde, blue-eyed princesses resonated with me when I was growing up. But I was even a minority in my own family. Both my mother and sister were dark haired. My hair is dark now. I could identify with those characters in books but what about the darker europeans such as the hispanic child or the african child and the asian child? Do my storytimes reflect my audience? Consider Walt Disney's Cinderella from the point of view of the hispanic niñita. This is our society's standard of beauty and, honey, you're not it. What does that do to her? This could cause her to reject books, reading, and school.

Rachelle tells us to look at picture books (and other children's books, because non-fiction can sneak up under our radar) and check the illustrations and storyline.

Look at the lifestyles of the characters.
Weigh the relationships between people.
Note the heroes.
Consider the effects on the self image of different sorts of children.
Consider the author's and illustrator's backgrounds (and think hard about that Five Chinese Brothers book).
Check the author's perspective.
Watch for loaded words.
Look at the copyright date.
Can you change the hero to a female? Can you change the race? Can you find another book in the catalog or your collection that will show more diversity?

Rachelle says that in her class she had a male student who claimed he felt he was the Prince that was in search of the Princess to rescue. And after all the slamming of stereotypes the women in the class did ... they all suddenly focused on him. Well, I wish him well. If you think it's your job to rescue someone ... you will spend the rest of your life rescuing while they spend the rest of their life being rescued and, ya know, that can get old real fast.

She concentrated on the Cinderella story, of which there are plenty from different cultures and from less gender-stereotyped attitudes ... but I think you need to know the original stories to appreciate the twists. I'm not talking about the ethnicity, just the gender. Because, actually, there's nothing wrong with girls liking pink, babies, cooking, frilly things. Then we can add books about the more practical girls, who wear loafers because they're comfortable (like in Cinder Edna above) - but I think they need to come later.
And then, even saying that, there is one of my favorite alternative lifestyle fairy tales:


Others are:
The cowboy and the black-eyed pea by Tony Johnston
Rumplestiltskin's daughter by Diane Stanley
Three cool kids by Rebecca Emberly (the three billygoats Gruff in da 'hood)
and, of course, Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson