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  • The Feminist Press:Ten Years of Nonsexist Children's Books
  • Sharon Wigutoff (bio)

In a world where publishing giants are merging with corporations in order to ensure their continuation, and where small, alternative organizations appear and disappear with disturbing frequency, the tenth anniversary of The Feminist Press is an occasion worthy of wonder. To those of us who work at the Press and have watched it grow and evolve, it is also a source of pride. The Feminist Press was started in 1970 by university teachers Florence Howe and Paul Lauter, who, with a handful of volunteers and no working capital, conceived of a publishing house that would produce biographies of women, reprints of lost works by or about women, women's studies materials, and nonsexist children's books. Today, at the end of its first decade, the catalogue of the Press contains forty-eight titles, including The Women's Studies Newsletter, a quarterly journal that has become the official publication of the National Women's Studies Association. In addition to its publishing activity, The Feminist Press has provided educational services that include in-service courses for teachers on sexism in education; talks, workshops, and conferences for school and community groups; and nationally recognized studies on sex bias in textbooks and in juvenile literature.1 Through both its focuses —publishing and educational services—The Feminist Press has sought to give visibility to women's contributions and to make people aware of the existence, and the damaging effects, of sex bias.

From the very beginning, there has been a commitment to provide young children with books that countered the images put forth in standard children's literature. By 1970, studies had appeared documenting the underrepresentation of women and girls in children's books and the severely limited options given females. These included statistical surveys of the number of stories about girls as opposed to boys; the number of illustrations of girls and boys; activity vs. passivity relative to sex; and [End Page 57] the depiction of adult role models. The conclusions of all these studies were the same: children's literature was overwhelmingly the domain of the active, adventurous boy. Girls were presented —when they were at all —as passive, housebound creatures, as were adult women. Boys were constricted in a different way, by having to be the "hero" at all times, the strong older brother, the one Mother relied on until Father returned home from work. Clearly, if children were to free themselves from the stereotypes imposed upon them by their reading matter, if they were ever to believe that more than these few choices were possible, then an alternative body of literature had to come into being, a literature that offered expanded possibilities and options.

The first publication of The Feminist Press addressed itself to this need. The Dragon and the Doctor, a simple picture book by Barbara Danish, featured a female doctor, her younger brother as the nurse, and a dragon with a sore tail. Other picture books followed: Firegirl, by Gibson Rich; A Train for Jane, by Norma Klein; My Mother the Mail Carrier/ Mi Mama la Cariera, a bilingual book by Inez Maury; Coleen the Question Girl, by Arlie Hochschild; Nothing But a Dog, by Bobbi Katz; ABC Workbook, by Jean Mangi; and Storypak, edited by Merle Froschl. For older children, there was I'm Like Me, a collection of poems by Siv Widerburg.

In time, other small presses joined the struggle against sexism in children's literature; among them were Lollipop Power in North Carolina and New Seed Press in California. As feminist bookstores began to open throughout the country, those parents who were consciously committed to providing nonsexist literature for their children were finding outlets for these needs. But the problem was —and remains —how to reach beyond this small audience to those who care but do not know where to begin looking for such literature; to those who feel an uneasiness because of the stereotypes but do not know that alternatives are being offered; and finally, to those who cannot yet understand that the decorative, simplistic stories in their children's hands can be insidiously harmful. For The Feminist Press, as for other...

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