In an era when we are finally understanding just how essential failure is to creative breakthroughs yet we are battling a perilous epidemic of mindsets fixed on all-or-nothing success, the message of the book is doubly encouraging and important, beyond the obvious primary motif of defying gender stereotypes. In Rosie Revere, Engineer ( public library), they tell the enormously heartening story of little Rosie - quiet schoolgirl by day, fierce inventor of gizmos by night - who dreams of becoming a bona fide engineer and learns to embrace failure as a vital part of the invention journey.
And yet a decade and a half into the twenty-first century, we still settle for the profound failure of imagination that results in less than a third of contemporary children’s books featuring female protagonists, with a solid portion of those purveying limiting gender expectations.įew creators have done more to enrich this impoverished landscape with imaginative alternatives than writer-illustrator duo Andrea Beaty and David Roberts, who also gave us the wonderful celebration of diversity Happy Birthday, Madame Chapeau.
Mouse, 1981), a same-sex family ( Heather Has Two Mommies, 1989), or a female quantum physicist ( Alice in Quantumland, 1995). A few decades ago, it was a commendable feat for a children’s book to imagine such stereotype-defying notions as a man who does housework instead of his wife ( Gone Is Gone, 1936), a black woman astronaut ( Blast Off, 1973), a female architect ( Need A House? Call Ms.
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