I’m looking for books for a three-year-old where the girls don’t wear frocks. I have nothing against dresses but it would be nice to have a positive female role model in a story who doesn’t wear inappropriate dresses to save the world - it’s nigh on impossible to ride a bike or climb a climbing frame in a frock. If the Frozen princesses had had any sense they’d not have gone off prancing up snowy mountains in party dresses. Trying to convince a three-year-old that girls can be just as brilliant wearing jeans is impossible with no evidence to back it up (mums don’t count). There are some great girls in stories, Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenko’s The Paper Bag Princess and Princess Pearl from Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s Zog spring to mind, but it’s all dresses - why?
Girls in picture books still wearing dresses! It does seem amazing given the campaigning against sexual stereotyping in children’s books since the 1970s and the booming “alternative” princess stories published from that point onwards. Princesses such as Babette Cole’s Princess Smartypants, a rule breaking princess who refuses to be cowed by convention and, more recently and for younger readers, Tony Ross’s extensive Little Princess stories including I Want My Potty! seem unlikely dress-wearers and yet the Little Princess always wears a flowing white nightie – a version of a dress although it also looks a bit unisex.
Fortunately, Princess Smartypants dresses the part better; she is cool enough to wear dungarees. Perhaps, just as the princesses seem to need to keep their titles and in the case of the Little Princess even her crown, they also need to wear girls’ clothes so that the juxtaposition between their behaviour and their status is thrown into sharper relief.
But, away from princesses, do other great girl characters do better on the trouser-wearing front? It seems not.
In classic titles such as Katie Morag Delivers the Mail and Katie Morag and the Big Boy Cousins Marie Hedderwick’s delightfully uncompromising Katie Morag stomps around in her wellingtons, argues with her parents, hangs out with her super-cool, dungaree-wearing Grannie Island who can fix tractor engines and teams up with her big, very red-headed boy cousins. Just the kind of girl you might think would wear trousers. But she does all of this in a little green skirt. Or possibly, since the stories are set in Scotland, a less girly kilt. Nonetheless, it is certainly not trousers.
Emily Brown, the hugely confident heroine of Cressida Cowell and Neal Layton’s This Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown and Emily Brown and the Elephant Emergency is bold enough to stand up to the Queen in the first and to persuade her mother to stop ringing her up and let her go off on an adventure in the second. And she does it all in a beautiful dress.
Lola, Charlie’s hard-to-please little sister in Lauren Child’s glorious Charlie and Lola stories such as I Will Not Ever Never eat a Tomato is another surprising dress-wearer. As is the little girl who boldly goes on Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. And Lily, star of Emma Chichester Clark’s Where are You, Blue Kangaroo? the list goes on…
So where are the girls in trousers? The answer is there are not nearly enough of them but here are a few.
In Lisa Stubbs’s Lily and Bear, a touching story of a little girl’s friendship with a bear, Lily wears grey trousers – or maybe leggings. But even she dons a tutu to wear over them when given the chance.
The remarkably cheerful Cinderella in Teresa Heapy and Sue Heap’s Very Little Cinderella wears attractive green-checked trousers.
Sarah Garland’s books such as Going Shopping and Doing the Garden have always captured family life as it really is. In her Eddie’s Tent and How to go Camping no one in the family is wearing a dress but then, there are no especially prominent girl characters.
Clearly, more girls in trousers are needed. Urgently!
Do have picture books where the girls don’t wear dresses or skirts to recommend? Email childrens.books@theguardian.com or get in touch on Twitter @GdnchildrensBks (where you can also ask The Book Doctor a question using #BookDoctor) and we’ll add them to this blog!
Your ideas for girls in trousers (and boys in skirts):
Amy, from Child’s Play, on email
Here are some titles from our range which show women and girls who are wearing trousers rather than skirts: Stella, the protagonist of The Great Googly Moogly wears shorts throughout the picture book – it would be difficult to catch an enormous fish whilst wearing a constrictive skirt! In our versions of Little Miss Muffet and Mary Had a Little Lamb, the titular characters are shown wearing shorts and trousers. You can see more here: http://www.childs-play.com/.
@GdnChildrensBks George and Anne from Famous Five always wore trousers in my imagination!
— Alice Cowell (@LowCarbonOG) June 15, 2015
Mary Hoffman (on Facebook)
My Grace character wears trousers/jeans in all the picture books from Amazing Grace to Grace at Christmas, except when she is dressing up as other characters or wearing African robes. And AG was published nearly 25 years ago!
@GdnChildrensBks Girls in trousers - George (Famous 5) Valkyrie in Skulduggery Pleasant, Batgirl, Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Violet Beauregarde
— Harry Oulton (@HarryOulton1) June 15, 2015
Martina, on email
I would like to share a book that my daughters love. It is by a Lithuanian author and the book is called Googoo Moogoo and Elf the Mess.
@GdnChildrensBks Yes! Our new character Frankie wears a funky pair of dungarees! @gormley_greg @orchardbooks pic.twitter.com/XipZH3NRJ8
— Steven Lenton (@2dscrumptious) June 15, 2015
Josh, on email
If you have trouble with dinosaurs, or if there are dinosaurs in trouble – call this girl: Lilly Bristol, Dinosaur Wrangler.
@GdnChildrensBks Harriet the spy and Princess Smartypants, of course!
— Elope_ (@elope_) June 15, 2015
Claudia, on email
I’d love to direct you to my picture book Super Red Riding Hood, where the heroine is in brown short overalls and confronts the Big Bad Wolf for all his meanness.
@GdnChildrensBks George in Enid Blyton's Famous Five books.
— Phillip Blackman (@NobbyNobody) June 15, 2015
Laura, on email
In the library last week I found The Tough Princess by Martin Waddle and Patrick Benson. Got it deliberately for my 4 year old son who is already accepting silly ideas about what girls can and can’t do. Great book. She rescues the prince and is taller than him. Though they do solve marital issues by punching each other in the face…
@GdnChildrensBks Ramona Quimby - always in overalls. Always
— Barbara Moon (@moonb2) June 15, 2015
@GdnChildrensBks Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress http://t.co/3cMR6LCrnW
— Rachel Cunneen (@RachCunneen) June 15, 2015
@GdnChildrensBks Ronia, the Robber's Daughter https://t.co/ke0ZgqRs2C
— Babysses (@babysses) June 15, 2015
@beingrichard @GuardianBooks @GdnChildrensBks @jeccleshare Anne Fine. Bill's New Frock. D Walliams, The Boy in the Dress...
— SUSAN HILL (@susanhillwriter) June 15, 2015
@GdnChildrensBks Nancy and Peggy Blackett, Susan, Titty, Dot etc from the books by Arthur Ransome (Swallows and Amazon's etc)
— Alice Cowell (@LowCarbonOG) June 15, 2015
@GdnChildrensBks Petrova Fossil in Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes.
— Gemma Bristow (@konallis) June 15, 2015
@GdnChildrensBks Peter (Petronella) of Lone Pine Club (Malcolm Saville).Also being performed by @PentabusTheatre here http://t.co/Cx5FojtwjU
— Shrewsbury Bookfest (@Shrewsbookfest) June 15, 2015
@GdnChildrensBks From Crista Unzner's illustrations for Ingrid Ostheeren's delightful "The Blue Monster": pic.twitter.com/pKWrzxVmfb
— Terri Windling (@terriwindling) June 15, 2015
@GdnChildrensBks Thirrin Freer in Stuart Hill's Cry of the Icemark and Torina in Victoria Hanley's The Seer and The Sword
— Natalie Sorrell (@a_sea_change) June 15, 2015
Cathy Cassidy (on Facebook) Princess Smartypants, Babette Cole. Most girls in the pciture books by the fabulous Sarah Garland. Topsy & Tim. Plenty of the girl characters from my books… it’s not a problem, surely? Girls in real life wear what they like, I think… and if you choose to wear skirts that shouldn’t stop you from doing anything adventurous, either! I’ve climbed mountains, vaulted gates, cycled, ridden a horse & skiied (badly!) in a skirt… girls and women can wear and do what we choose! :o) xxx
@GuardianBooks @GdnChildrensBks @jeccleshare Dora the Explorer is always in shorts. Go, Dora, go!
— Hannah Wilson (@IamHannahWilson) June 15, 2015
@EmilyDrabs Amanda Shuffleup in #TheImaginary (Emily Gravett) and Alice Crudge in #FizzlebertStump (@sarahhorne9)... pic.twitter.com/wLGSbTEn95
— A.F. Harrold (@afharrold) June 15, 2015
