Long time friend, sometime commenter, and fellow blogger InteractiveReader recently managed to bring the Scholastic publishing company to it’s knees (kind of)(okay not really, but still). Allow me to explain.
On Thursday, Jackie put up a blog post about a Scholastic series, “How to Survive Anything”. One of the books is subtitled “Boys Only”, and the other is entitled “Girls Only”. Based on the table of contents, see if you can figure out which one is which.
Option 1:
- How to Survive a shark attack
- How to Survive in a Forest
- How to Survive Frostbite
- How to Survive a Plane Crash
- How to Survive in the Desert
- How to Survive a Polar Bear Attack
- How to Survive a Flash Flood
- How to Survive a Broken Leg
- How to Survive an Earthquake
- How to Survive a Forest Fire
- How to Survive in a Whiteout
- How to Survive a Zombie Invasion
- How to Survive a Snakebite
- How to Survive if Your Parachute Fails
- How to Survive a Croc Attack
- How to Survive a Lightning Strike
- How to Survive a T-Rex
- How to Survive Whitewater Rapids
- How to Survive a Sinking Ship
- How to Survive a Vampire Attack
- How to Survive an Avalanche
- How to Survive a Tornado
- How to Survive Quicksand
- How to Survive a Fall
- How to Survive a Swarm of Bees
- How to Survive in Space
Option 2:
- How to survive a BFF Fight
- How to Survive Soccer Tryouts
- How to Survive a Breakout
- How to Show You’re Sorry
- How to Have the Best Sleepover Ever
- How to Take the Perfect School Photo
- How to Survive Brothers
- Scary Survival Dos and Don’ts
- How to Handle Becoming Rich
- How to Keep Stuff Secret
- How to Survive Tests
- How to Survive Shyness
- How to Handle Sudden Stardom
- More Stardom Survival Tips
- How to Survive a Camping Trip
- How to Survive a Fashion Disaster
- How to Teach Your Cat to Sit
- How to Turn a No Into a Yes
- Top Tips for Speechmaking
- How to Survive Embarrassment
- How to Be a Mind Reader
- How to Survive a Crush
- Seaside Survival
- How to Soothe Sunburn
- How to Pick Perfect Sunglasses
- Surviving a Zombie Attack
- How to Spot a Frenemy
- Brilliant Boredom Busters
- How to Survive Truth or Dare
- How to Beat Bullies
- How to be an Amazing Babysitter
Something tells me you probably figured it out.
So Jackie’s post was more or less just a copy and paste of the respective tables of contents with the title “Sexist Much?”. Of course, a quick glance at the respective tables of contents was all it really took, and the while thing went viral pretty quickly (speaking for myself, I hit the share button almost as soon as I was done reading), anywhere from Ryan North to BuzzFeed to Jezebel.
As Jackie reports, Scholastic was already (kinda sorta) back peddling by Friday, promising “no further copies will be made available” (whatever that means, since the books are still available for purchase from the Scholastic web page, even with the “Show only books available for purchase” checkbox checked).
How awesome is it that a blogger can throw up a quick post on Thursday (a blogger I know!), and a major publisher can announce they will cease distribution on that book series 24 hours later? How not awesome is it that Scholastic needed the Internet to point out how ridiculously sexist these books were? How did those books ever get past editing and marketing at Scholastic in the first place? Scholastic of all people! Were these books in the book order forms kids bring home from school?
Stupid mistake, Scholastic. I hope this one stings a little. (Or maybe not since their “apology” is insincere at best, and a downright lie at worst, given that they are still selling the books)
Shane Halbach 
How dare someone imply that there is any difference in the sexes! For shame. It’s not fair that the girls get all the useful practical stuff while the boys can only learn skills they would probably never get the chance to put into practice.
LikeLike
Ah, but you’re assuming which list is which!
I deduce that the first list must be for girls, because it contains “How to survive a vampire attack” and popular literature demonstrates that vampires are far more likely to go for girls.
I like how one of the sexes learns how to survive an entire zombie invasion, but the other can only survive a single zombie attack.
LikeLike