Laurel Snyder Is An Old-Fashioned Girl

Laurel Snyder made an appearance on Beatrice earlier this year, when her first book of poems came out. Since then, she’s published two books for children, Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains and Inside the Slidy Diner—and, as this essay reveals, learned some interesting things about her writing in the process.

When I finished writing my first kids’ book, a friend asked to read it. Overall, her comments were positive, and I was pleased. But then she asked me if there wasn’t a way to make the book less sexist. I was surprised at this. It had never occurred to me that the adventures of a defiant little milkmaid would be considered anti-feminist.

But my friend said, “You keep calling Lucy a girl and Wynston a boy. Why do you have to lock them into rigid boxes like that? It’s so conventional.”

I considered this ridiculous, over-the-top feminism. Boys are boys and girls are girls; I ignored her.

But then, when I was revising my second book, my editor had the same kind of comments. “Why does the dad work and the mom stay home?” she asked me. “What is this, 1950?”

And the problem is that yeah, it kind of is—

Because a lot of classic children’s books are set in a “midcentury American” mode. And I write from within that tradition. Those are the books I LOVE! So even if I give my girls attitude, I’m placing them in a universe that replicates what I hope we’re changing in our world.

It’s tricky.

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2 September 2008 | guest authors |

Beatrice @ The Merc Returns in September

“Beatrice @ The Merc,” the reading series I curate for the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction, is coming back for at least two nights this fall—and this time around, the emphasis has been placed more strongly on introducing readers to debut novelists.

On Wednesday, September 17, our guests will be Wendy Lee (Happy Family) and Irina Reyn (What Happened to Anna K.), a pairing which is, as Reyn jokingly observed when I told her the news, practically Tolstoyan in its alignment. There will be more to say about each of these books, as well as the two novels that will be featured on October 1, in the weeks to come.

Wendy Lee is a graduate of Stanford University and New York University’s Creative Writing Program. She worked for two years in China as a volunteer English teacher and now lives in New York City. Irina Reyn was born in Moscow, and currently divides her time between Pittsburgh, PA and Brooklyn, NY. She is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.

28 August 2008 | events |