SOURCE: "The Hero's Woods: Pyle's 'Robin Hood' and the Female Reader," in Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 4, Winter, 1986-87, pp. 197-200.

In the following essay, May argues that Pyle's depiction of the mythical forest in The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood is inclusive of young female readers, unlike other books for children such as Treasure Island and Peter Pan, where girls are either explicitly left out or serve as young mother figures who perform household duties while the boys have real adventures.

Legend tells me that, when Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his Treasure Island, he honored his stepson's request that he leave out all women, in order to create a real pirate story. That does not set well with me: a woman, I was once a girl who, like Stevenson's stepson, also sought adventure is drama, in going to another place. But the children's literature of my...