As a follow-up to this post, I told my students about my experience at Borders. I presented them with my experience and just asked for their thoughts. At first, I think they thought I was crazy, just telling them about wandering up and down the aisles. However, as soon as I mentioned the “Books for Boys” and “Books for Girls” signs, they were horrified. Hands immediately flew into the air, waving, while their mouths opened, jaws dropped. They brought up some great points, and I was so proud of them! Here are just a few of their thoughts:
– What happens if someone wants to read a book that the store has labeled for the opposite gender? Would they decide not to read it then?
-How come the young adult and adult books aren’t divided by gender?
-That’s sexist!
-Lots of girls love science-fiction and fantasy!
-Books aren’t girl books or boy books. They are just books. Anyone can love any book. Just like they can dislike any book.
-Why do they use genres for the rest of the categories? Boy and girl are not genres.
-Let’s write them a persuasive letter and tell them to change their categories!
You know what? I think we just may use that last suggestion. Next week is our last full week of school and we will write a letter from our class to our local Borders, asking that they stop using gender as category for their books!
Filed under: books, reading | Tagged: book categories, borders, chain bookstores |
The Reading Zone 
I completely agree that is so wrong in many ways. just divide the groups from adult section and young adult section and split them into genres like fiction or nonfiction or fantasy or realistic fiction or fairy tale. That will mostly solve all problems because in there they have pink books for girls and darker colors for boys. As a boy I still think that what they are doing is very sexist.
[…] the street. Since then, I have had a few complaints from my students about them (see here and here). But today, two of my students brought up separate events they had experienced at our local […]