stereotyping Molly Weasley and male/female role models

[sylviablundell2001]

No: HPFGUIDX 85002

Lisa wrote :
>Research of school-aged kids shows that most boys wont read a book 
(in general) with a female leading character.

Now me:

This is mostly true.  There is a brilliant book by an English writer, 
Gene Kemp, called "The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler" in which the 
narrator and main character turns out, in the final chapter, to be a 
girl.  Kemp never says she is a girl.  It is left to the reader to 
fall into the stereotype trap.  I cannot describe the pain and 
anguish of the class of boys I was teaching when they discovered the 
gender of the character they had all enthusiastically identified with.
I think it quite probably that a lot of boys would have resisted 
reading a book by Joanne Rowling.  Incidentally, Gene Kemp is a woman.
Sylvia (who has to admit to falling into the trap herself)