Gender and Sexuality Commons^™

Of Caldecotts And Kings, Roger Clark, Rachel Lennon, Leanna Morris

Roger D. Clark

The authors mark the twentieth anniversary of the classic study by Weitzman et al., which found considerable gender stereotyping in picture books for preschool children, by replicating and extending their study with an updated sample that includes books by Black illustrators. The authors find evidence that female characters and female relationships receive considerably more attention in recent books by both conventional illustrators and Black illustrators than they did in the late 1960s. They also find, consistent with the liberal feminist aims of Weitzman et al., evidence that male and female characters are shown in a more egalitarian fashion than they …