It’s the third and last day of the blog tour for Girl in the Arena by Lise Haines, and I’m going to copy from My Own Little Corner of the World and post Lise Haines’s own article about how she came up with the idea for the book.

I have to confess that the Gladiator world culture was the least organic element of the book. I really had trouble believing how mainstream it was. I can certainly envision young women being brainwashed into going to a special training school to become a gladiator’s wife, but I had difficulty swallowing the notion that this could be “cool.” And with all the violence we see between women on reality TV–catfights and fistfights over aging rock pseudo-icons–it’s a leap to buy that Lyn is the first girl ever to want to fight in the arena. We don’t live in a chivalrous society; there’s nothing in our social code to prevent a woman from being permitted to fight to the death if she wants. So the premise of a split between men and women along such heavily gendered lines happening in mainstream society just didn’t resonate with me completely.

And check out the rest of the stops on the tour:

Abby the Librarian
A Patchwork of Books
All About Children’s Books
Becky’s Book Reviews
Fireside Musings
Homeschool Book Buzz
KidzBookBuzz.com
Maw Books Blog
My Own Little Corner of the World
Reading is My Superpower
Through a Child’s Eyes