As a scholar of social reproduction and also a toddler parent, it's my professional opinion that new kids books trying to do counter-programming on gender norms for little girls are Bad, Actually: they articulate the norms they are trying to debunk and thereby fail at their task.

I'm the parent of a 3-year-old and a nearly-2-year-old and thank you for articulating something I've felt but not named. My intution is that modeling stories are more effective than didactic books (not really stories), especially since modeling is so important with other ways of being?

Strongly agree. There are great books that model compassion and finding your own path, and then there are books that ask "Howbout a workplace sensitivity training video but with bears and elephants?" Young kids don't work like that.

And the vast majority of this genre are so poorly written that they are nonsensical and sometimes actually difficult to read out loud.