COOL not CUTE – revised and updated!

UPDATE: This post has been updated with the following new content:

October 2015: "Picture Book Consumers" section added

This site has now been online for two years, during which time I’ve had a lot of feedback both supportive and critical. While some of this feedback is reflected in my blog posts, I thought it should also be reflected in the COOL not CUTE essay at the top of this blog, so I’ve now updated and revised this.

Here’s an outline of the significant changes:

The subtitle

The essay’s original subtitle was “What boys really want from picture books.” All children are different and in the original version of the essay I acknowledged that some boys might find none of the boy-friendly ingredients I’d identified appealing and that “What many boys really want from picture books” might have been a better subtitle. The essay also acknowledged that, while these ingredients might typically appeal more to boys, there would also be some girls that found them equally appealing – so “What many boys and some girls really want from picture books” might have been even more appropriate.

The site/essay's subtitle has been changed to something a little less reductive.

While I had taken care to make these qualifications in the essay itself, I now recognise that the subtitle gave some readers a simplistic impression of my argument that may have deterred them from examining it any further. So I’ve now changed the subtitle to one that, while far less snappy, will hopefully be less off-putting to such readers.

Picture Book Consumers

In the original essay I’d estimated the gender balance of picture book consumers based on data for the US children's book market (including books for older children). I've now repalced this estimate with specific figures (84% female 16% male) from a 2013 Bowker report on the UK, US and Canadian children's book market.

Children’s Book Awards

In the original essay I’d suggested that the organisers of the Carnegie and Greenaway Book Awards might consider adopting a gender-balanced judging panel for future awards. I subsequently campaigned for such a change but was unable to convince the Youth Libraries Group that runs the awards that gender-balance judging was either practical or worthwhile. So I’ve revised the relevant sections of the essay to reflect this.

Children’s Book Reviewing

In the original essay I mentioned the lack of gender-balance among children’s book reviewers and supported this with statistics taken from reviews of my own picture books. I’ve now replaced this with the results of a gender analysis of picture book reviews published in UK national newspapers in 2013, which I carried out subsequently.

A Male Protagonist

The original essay included “A male protagonist” in the list of “boy-friendly ingredients commonly missing from picture books”. Having been made aware that male picture book protagonists outnumber females by a ratio of two to one, I accept that this particular ingredient can't reasonably be described as "commonly missing" from picture books and have now cut it from the list.


I’ve also made some minor revisions to the NATURE and NURTURE and FIGHTERS and FASHIONISTAS essays. These are chiefly to maintain consistency with the revised COOL not CUTE essay and there are no significant changes to their content.