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Honestly, my sales pitch when I was a kid was, 'You don't want these Girl Scout cookies, do you?' If I had to push my own books, I'd stop writing. I hate the conflation of marketing and writing.

The business of fiction is the study of the human condition, and gender is something that many humans are obsessed with, thus making it rather difficult to ignore when studying the human condition!

Many societies have educated their male children on the simple device of teaching them not to be women.

In a highly competitive newspaper market, every editor needs to appeal to female readers to boost their circulation.

Picture books are being marginalised. I get the feeling children are being pushed away from picture books earlier and earlier and being told to look at 'proper' books, which means books without pictures.

I've nothing against kids reading anything they please, but I do have a problem with pink books for girls and black books for boys.

One can make a case that says that since 85% of children being brought up in single family homes are being brought up by women that about 85% of elementary school teachers should be males to balance out the feminization that the boys and girls receive.

We're showing kids a world that is very scantily populated with women and female characters. They should see female characters taking up half the planet, which we do.

There are probably industries where gender is more of an issue, but our industry is not one where I think that's relevant.