ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we consider gender representation in the Harry Potter series and examine specific books and characters. Elizabeth is a woman in her forties and Trevor a man in his twenties: we have very different life experiences and ways of approaching the texts, and yet our analyses are similar-the Harry Potter books, like many popular books for children, mostly reinforce gender stereotypes. Many children yearn to be lost in literary worlds where they can experience adventure, heroics and power, and that means that girls read a lot of books with boys as the hero, such as Pony Boy in The Outsiders, and Sam Gribley in My Side of the Mountain. When boys and girls adventure together, boys usually have more fun. For example, in the Box Car Children series, older brother Henry is having the lion share of adventures, while the younger sisters cook and clean, typical of the kind of text that irritates my children. Even Winnie the Pooh is dominated by male characters. Pooh, Tigger, Christopher Robin, Owl, Piglet, Eeyore are all male. The only female is Kanga, the mother of the little boy animal, Roo.
