Back in college, I chuckled when my psychology professor talked about how she strived to raised her children in a gender-neutral way.  She had a girl and a boy.  One day, her son wanted to go to school with hair clips just like his sister.  Despite gentle discouragement, she wasn’t able to talk her son out of it, so off he went to school with hair clips.  Fortunately other kids thought it was so novel and did not tease him.

Now I have two sons, I found myself in a similar delightful dilemma.  Ever since I downloaded Pinkalicous the Musical to my Honda Odyssey’s hard drive, little E has been asking me to play it whenever we are in the car.  Periodically he’ll shout out, “I love pink”.  Even my kindergartner says, “Mommy, do you know my second favorite color is?  Pink!”

Children’s books really shouldn’t be about the gender of the main character.  It should be the interesting things the characters say or encounter.

I’d like to introduce two book series where the central characters are girls with strong personalities.

Ladybug Girl is about a girl with a red ladybug costume.  With a vivid imagination, she forms a bug squad with playground friends.

Pinkalicious is about a girl who obviously loves the color pink.  In fact, her obsession often leads to trouble, as she turned pink after consuming too many pink cupcakes.

What other young heroine book series do you recommend?