A book request

Now here’s a difficult question from a reader:

Long time reader, but only very occasional poster here. A friend asked me
to recommend some books to read to small
children (2 -5 years old) to teach the basics of atheism. His son is
getting exposed to a lot of religious training from
his wife, and my friend wants something to present the alternative
perspective.

Any suggestions? Feel free to open this up to the blog.

BTW, he is also interested in short books about the sciences suitable to be
read to children of the same age as bedtime
stories. Suggestions in this category are also welcomed.

I don’t have a good answer. Usually, I’d just say that there shouldn’t be “atheist” children’s books — there’s nothing not to teach, and I’d rather kids were just brought up to think for themselves — but this is a request for specific counter-programming against religious indoctrination. Anyone have any suggestions?

Genderification of Genre

Several of us here on scienceblogs have recently discussed the stereotypes of women who read science fiction. Syaffolee puts an interesting twist on it: what about men who read romance novels? She’s reporting on an article that says almost a quarter of the readers are men.

Nobody seems to be speculating on whether guys who read bodice-rippers are cuter than average.

There is an interesting idea there about the genre ghetto. I’ve read a few, years ago, and didn’t care for them much…and now I judge the whole genre by a fuzzy memory of a non-representative sample. Are there great authors I’m missing because I can’t get past the pink covers with bare-chested men on them?

Another genre I avoid is the cowboy novel (in my local library, cowboys and romance are probably the dominant forms of literature, too). I read some Louis L’Amour, also years ago, and was shocked at how bad the writing was, and haven’t gone back since.

Genre fiction seems to be a tool to lock in to a specific segment of the audience, but it’s also an effective way to lock out an even larger audience, because we’ve all got these biases.