5/5: bumblebees & titty's victories

During our walk this afternoon we saw a couple of bumblebees climbing on and in bell-shaped flowers.  When I was little, I was scared of bumblebees; I'm so glad that that particular misapprehension has been set aright.  They are such sweeties, and now I always smile when I see them.

I'm listening to Swallows and Amazons on my iPod these days.  It's about the summer holiday of some siblings who have a sailboat and are camping on an island in a lake in England.  The middle child, a girl named Titty, got to do two heroic things:  single-handedly capture the boat of their friendly opponents in a game of "war" and (at the same time) hear where some real-life burglars were hiding their plunder.  It seemed too good to be true that Titty would be the crux, since all too often in the children's literature I've been reading girls' achievements get somehow undermined or subordinated to those of boys.  That kind of gender-based narrative punishment--which kicks in almost like clockwork--has been getting me (and Chris and my students) down.  But it looks like Titty's victories are pretty much in the clear!

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