“And he’s splashing in a puddle!” I said, pointing out the picture of a beige puppy frolicking in the rain.

Then I stopped. Why had I assumed the puppy was male? Why was the “he” my default? For that matter, why did I assume the adult dog singing the song to the puppy was their mother?

There was nothing in Sandra Boyton’s delightful Snugglepuppy book to suggest the gender of either character. No pronouns anywhere. Even the clothes were about as gender neutral as children’s literature usually gets. (And even if they weren’t, who is to say that the character is definitely one gender or another?)

Despite that, I assumed a mother-son relationship. Now some of this is personal perspective – I’m a mom with two sons, so that’s how I’m probably going to see a parent-like character singing to a child.

But it’s more than that. It’s the cultural assumption that a character is default male. In a study of the 100 most popular children’s books of 2017 done by the British newspaper The Guardian with the market research company Nielsen, the main character was twice as likely to be male than female. I’ve seen it myself over and over again – both humans and animals are almost always male. A fifth of the books don’t have any female characters at all. (And I’m guessing even fewer have non-gendered characters.) When animals are stereotypically strong, like bears or wolves, they’ve even more likely to be identified as male. Females are likely to be delegated to sidekick or supporting positions. Or as “the mom” as I did with Snuggepuppy. Of course, girls need to see themselves reflected in books, but boys also need to see that not every book has to be about them.

So what can we do?

Purposely choosing books with female characters is a great start. Even though they aren’t the majority, there are loads of great books with female characters in all sorts of roles. Some of my favorite picture books are The Princess and the Pony (fantasy with a twist), Ada Twist, Scientist (ordinary life with an extraordinary little girl) and Little Melba and Her Big Trombone (non-fiction about a famous jazz trombone player). And of course, the Little Engine Who Could is female, as is the train she helps out. In comic books, Phoebe and Her Unicorn (heavy inspiration from Calvin and Hobbes) and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (superheroes) are awesome. Aisha Ray at Books for Littles has a great list of books featuring girls of color specifically . To expand the selection to include non-binary folks, Flamingo Rampant is a small children’s publisher that has great diverse books.

There’s also the approach of selective editing. I don’t usually change things in books, but I sometimes flip the gender if there’s zero difference otherwise. Every other animal in Dear Zoo is female in our house, as is the Little Blue Truck in the book of the same name and Bear in Bear Says Thanks. Some kids even do this themselves. I remember one woman talking about how she thought for years that Merry and Pippin in Lord of the Rings were female because that’s how she read it as a kid.

But of course, this wouldn’t be as necessary if the industry just had more diversity in the first place. On the bigger scale, we can ask our libraries to stock and feature more of the books listed above, which sends a message to publishers. We can even ask the publishers themselves, by emailing them directly, tweeting at them or sharing posts by groups like We Need Diverse Books.

These days, I don’t try to make any assumptions about the gender of either dog in Snugglepuppy. But I do keep in mind that if I made that mistake, my kids are likely to as well. Continuing to share stories that shift our internal narratives is how we’ll shift the bigger cultural narrative in the end.

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