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In this article I trace some of these debates, particularly as tiffany earrings sale took place in the years just prior to the start of the 1990s, when queer theory was beginning to emerge from the feminist and gay rights movements as a distinct intellectual and political approach. Focusing on the contested status of gender, and especially of individuals with non-normative gender identities, I shall then consider two texts for younger children that appeared at this significant historical moment and the ways in which they accommodate or resist feminist and queer readings.

Bill's New Frock (1989), by Anne Fine, and Louis Sachar's Marvin Redpost: Is He a Girl? (1993), the third in Sachar's series about the many dilemmas of an elementary school boy, are texts notable for their numerous obvious similarities. Both are short chapter books aimed at six to nine year olds; both humorously recount the experiences of a young boy who spends some time as a female. Bill Simpson, the protagonist of Fine's book, awakes one morning to find that (like Kafka's Gregor Samsa) he has undergone what he regards as a monstrous transformation: he has become a girl. For the rest of the day he is treated as such by parents, teachers, and friends alike-none of whom seems aware of anything untoward. After school, having ruined the pink frock in which his mother dressed him that morning, Bill is tiffany notes to revert definitively to boyhood, although both he and the reader have meanwhile been alerted to the very different treatment received by girls and boys in the world at large. Sachar's protagonist, Marvin Redpost, is told by a female classmate that he will turn into a girl if he manages to kiss his elbow-a prospect that both appals and attracts him. Eventually he manages this feat, and although he retains his male genitalia (watching his sister use the toilet he reflects, "at least in that way, he knew he was still a boy" [28]), he finds himself becoming increasingly feminine in his appearance, tastes, and behavior, to the extent that he begins to think of himself as female. Again, the book ends with a reversion to the status quo ante, following a second (accidental) elbow kiss.

The correspondences between the two books include not tiffany jewellery their general premise and conclusion but many more specific features. Both explore the world of the playground and the mixture of indifference and fascinated hostility with which girls and boys regard each other. Both play on the taboo of entering the other sex's bathroom. Both describe (and illustrate) a scene in which the protagonist finds a female face staring back at him from the mirror. Both make use of anxiety dreams and the fear of being seen in public in the "wrong" clothes. Although these texts use similar topoi with which to disrupt gender expectations, however, I will argue that their similarities mask important ideological differences.