Sage was lucky enough to recieve an email a while ago from Judy Horacek, whose wonderful feminist cartoons you would be familar with. She’d seen this old post which mentioned Where is the Green Sheep? which she illustrated, and thought Sage might enjoy a reading of "Growl" a book she has written and illustrated at the National Library. And he did, very much - it's a really lovely book about a toothily charming little monster. He rushed over to his Dad with it when we got home for it to be read to him, and has had it as one of his three bedtime stories each night since.
I try to make sure that Sage's books don't always feature active males/passive females and a world of unending whiteness and straightness, and I was glad that Growl is a girl monster - which Horacek talks a little about here. The first page introduces Growl, but it's not until the next page that she has a gender. Things being the way they are, this has apparently caused some surprise on occasions. Even after hearing this, and hearing the story read twice, Sage called Growl "he" when we were playing outside the library after the reading.
"Nah," I said, "Growl's a girl monster".
"Yeah, because she's a girl colour."
"What, purple?"
"Yeah."
"You've got a purple shirt on."
"I like purple. I like pink, too."
It's true. He's quite the metrosexual:
Although his dad reckons black nail polish is very rock, and not in the least poofy.
Apart from that it's just been firecrackers and looking at cats on the internet 'round here.
