Unicorn School, by Linda Chapman

My son is six (almost 7 MOM!) and learning how to read. His reading is pretty good for his age and I like to think that it’s in part because we read to him every night and there’s always books lying around the house.

Generally his book choices have been greatly influenced by me and all the books from my childhood that I unpacked into his room about 30 seconds after I found out I was having a baby, but lately, he’s been choosing his own books.

He’s moving away from picture books towards easy chapter books. Right now, The Magic Tree House series are his favourite books. At a recent school book fair I gave him free reign on picking out a new book or two. I was genuinely surprised by his choices.

First he came back to me with an adapted and simplified early reader of Alice in Wonderland. Very cool, I thought, we own a copy of the original, but haven’t read it, yet.

His second choice was Unicorn School, by Linda Chapman. This book has a bright pink cover and pastel coloured unicorns on the cover. It’s about as “girlie” a book you could find and my son wanted it.

He loves unicorns; he thinks they’re the most awesome of mythical creatures. I don’t know where this love has come from and I’ve never placed judgment on his choices of things he liked. I will admit to discouraging him from taking his unicorn to school for Show n’ Tell, simply because I didn’t want to have him heartbroken if the other boys teased him. But this book posed a dilemma, did I say to him the first thing that came into my mouth, “that’s a girl’s book” or keep my mouth shut and let him get a book that could be ‘girlie’?

It bothered me that I thought both those things for a number of reasons. 1. I’m a firm believer in people’s freedom of choice and that includes the books they read. Denying my son the opportunity to read a book he thinks is interesting is censorship and I have some pretty strong feelings about banning books and all that hoopla, so why was I doing that to my kid?

2. It looked like a girlie book. I hate that I thought that, hate that I “judged a book by its cover” (sorry) I saw the cover, the picture and the pastel unicorns and assumed that it was going to be inane girlie writing, like the Sweet Valley High and The Babysitter’s Club books from my childhood. Not that those books are bad books (okay, Sweet Valley High was very bad) but they are Girl books. The main characters are girls dealing with girl subjects, not in the Are you There God it’s me Margaret* vein, but there’s a girl-ness to them that might not resonate with my boy.

3. Those thoughts themselves bothered me. I’ve never done the ‘gender stereo-typing’ before, so why suddenly did I want to do it now? Why should I care if he reads a book about girls, in fact shouldn’t I be encouraging it, so he could possibly better understand girls when he gets older?

I suppose my justification could be that I don’t want him to be disappointed. He was so excited about the book and what if it turned out to be whiny gossipy ponies prancing around worrying about their manes and whether the Stallions noticed them?

Clearly the problem lies with me and my opinions, and rather harsh judgment, on ‘girl fiction’. I need to deal with that.

We bought the book. We came home from school and we read it. I now owe Linda Chapman a huge big ass apology.(And she needs to get someone else to do her marketing!)

"Linda, if you read is, I am sorry that I judged your book. My son really enjoyed it, and so did I. We're looking forward to reading the next in the series."

This book was great. The main characters are a mix of Girl and Boy unicorns that are going off to school to learn how to use magic and fly.

Linda is a writer in England and the story is very much of the English boarding school style with a little bit of Harry potter favour popped in. The main character is named Willow and she makes her first friend, Storm (A BOY!), when she stands up for him during some first day of school confusion.

It was not ‘girlie’ in the way that I judged it. In fact it was not stereo-typed at all. Any number of little boys that are friends with my son would enjoy this story.

However, I take issue with the cover. It’s pink; bright, shiny, bubble gum pink, but it’s not a story ‘just for girls’. Slap a blue, green or yellow cover on it and you’ve opened up your target audience 50%.

 Most of my son’s friends won’t even consider reading it because of the cover, which is unfortunate both for the boys who will miss out on a good story and the writer who will lose readers all because of a pink cover on a book.

I almost fell for it, which bugs me.

It says a lot about our society- that it’s pretty lame.

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Footnote*: "Are you there God it's me Margaret" is an AMAZING book and I think every young girl and boy should read it. Around 12 or 13 years old, I think anyway.

Footnote: In case you had noticed this book is not on the 100 books list. I noticed too. That's okay. We can all deal, can't we? Reading is a huge thing in my family and this is part of our reading journey.

Footnote 2: I am actually going to write a letter to Linda Chapman. She's got a snail mail address on the website, so It'll take awhile, but write one I will. If anything comes of it, you can be sure I will talk about it here.