I spend many mornings reading book after book to my 6 and 4 year old girls. These are precious times to me, as I have already said adios to those days with my big 8 year old.
We are in love with Fancy Nancy. Yes, she's a little drama queen, but so are my girls! I feel like it shows them how to handle their emotions in appropriate ways. She is always sweet to her sister. She is considerate to her parents and her parents are kind to her (I think children should expect adults to be kind to them). She is inventive, imaginative, open minded, and thoughtful. She loves things to be beautiful and feminine. She is always teaching new and "fancier" words to use. The over-kill girliness of it may sicken some, but I find it refreshing in a world where gender is in question. I'm more than happy to teach my girls that they are girls and that is worth celebrating by accentuating their femininity. Fancy Nancy gets 2 thumbs up in our house and with baby girl #3 set to make an appearance in the next couple months, Nancy will remain a staple in our children's library.
Since I'm always looking for new, fun books to read to my little ladies, I picked up a few Pinkalicious books at the school book fair earlier this school year. I have NOT been impressed. I do love that she uses her imagination, but think that sometimes she takes it too far. She is rude to her brother and sassy to her parents. In one book, she is challenged by a bully at school to see if she can make up a funny joke. She accepts the challenge and says "what was I supposed to do? EVERYONE was watching." Nice. When she takes the problem home, and is offered solutions by her family, she blows them off and stays up all night to come up with her own. Here and there I see glimpses of goodness in her, but overall I find her to be self-absorbed and disrespectful. I avoid reading these books to my girls and they will probably go bye-bye during my next clean out (nesting...)
I'd love any suggestions for other great, girly reads!
4 comments:
Hi Kim. It's Tirzah. I found this post so thought-provoking...I had to comment. Particularly in response to saying adios to reading to Austin. I recommend a book to you by Jim Trelease called "The Read-Aloud Handbook" (in fact, I saw one at DI in AF last Friday). I wish I had read this book when my kids were little. I regret not reading to my children when they were older. Here is a link to some of the contents of the book http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/rah-contents.html
It explores so many read-aloud things I wish I had known when I was at your stage. Summer is a great time to read a great adventure book or something with Austin.
I know this wasn't in answer to your question, but it really got me thinking. K, I'm done now.
We love Fancy Nancy too! She's hard to beat in this very specific category. We have also read the following less girly girly books: the Judy Moody series, Ivy and Bean, Ramona, and we will get to Little Women and Little House on the Prairie series. The beginning reader versions of Fancy Nancy are priceless too - you're probably familiar with those though.
So jealous of the girl books! I agree with your thoughts on reading books. I'm glad your teaching your girls about femininity.
How funny--I just wrote a very similar blog post and found yours when searching google images for a Pinkalicious photo to top it off! I totally agree with you! Here's my post: http://bearwithus4.blogspot.com/2012/02/girly-book-throwdown-fancy-nancy-vs.html
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