Blog Post #5 - Kaylee Mitchell

Although my final blog post is a little late, writing my final paper for this class has inspired me to write about Wolf Alice by Angela Carter. As several of you have said, this was one of my favorite readings of the course so far. I've never been very into the fantasy/fairytale genre, but this one really stuck with me for a variety of reasons. My final paper is focusing on stereotypes of genders in children's literature, and how I can use ideas from this course in my classroom to go against those stereotypes. I've been doing a lot of research about stereotypes of females in children's books and one theme that has come up over and over again has been the "damsel in distress" theme in fairy tales in particular. I've taken several courses at Fredonia that have incorporated fairy tales, and all of them have always been the same central theme: something terrible happens to the female character, and a male (typically a prince) comes and saves the day somehow. After a lot of my research, I've also realized that this is the case in many children's books as well. The majority of children's literature features a male protagonist, who is typically a strong, independent character. If the book features a female character, she is usually helped along the way by a male character such as her brother, dad, or friend. Looking back on why I liked Wolf Alice so much, I realized it may be because it was a different type of fairytale that I wasn't used to reading. Although Alice has conflicts throughout the story, she deals with them on her own and they help her find her own identity. She sees her own imperfections, and deals with several of the situations that young females have to deal with like getting their first period and struggle with self-esteem. Even though the central character of the story is a wolf, she deals with issues that adolescent girls deal with as well. You can feel how confused she is throughout the story, which is exactly how most girls going through these issues would be feeling as well. I feel that most of the stories written in the genre of fantasy have a theme of a strong male character, and it's refreshing to see a strong female character who is finding herself throughout a piece.

Something I thought I'd share with this piece and my final project was a few (awesome) children's books I found that are fairytale related, but show strong female protagonists going against the typical stereotype of females in fairy tales. Hopefully this will be helpful to some of my fellow elementary ed majors out there!

http://www.amazon.com/The-Paper-Princess-Classic-Munsch/dp/0920236162/ref=cm_syf_dtl_pl_4
http://www.amazon.com/The-Princess-Knight-Cornelia-Funke/dp/0439536308/ref=pd_sim_b_6

http://www.amazon.com/Julie-Wolves-HarperClassics-Craighead-George/dp/0064400581/ref=cm_lmf_tit_23
^ this one hits SO close to ideas from Wolf Alice. So cool!