A Mighty Girl's top picks of Hape Toys for Holiday Deals Week!

With a week full of great deals — perfectly timed for holiday shopping — we know that our community has their eyes open for exciting options for the kids on their gift lists. For Wednesday only, Amazon is offering a special promotion on toys from Hape, a company that makes high-quality, gender-neutral, ecologically-conscious toys, and we wanted to make sure our community didn't miss out!

In this blog post, we're highlighting twenty Hape toys suitable for young children. From marble runs to art easels, from wagons to workbenches, these toys encourage creative, open-ended play that's great for all kids, girls and boys alike. Plus, their solid wood construction ensures that they're durable enough to take everything that your Mighty Girls have to dish out! Parents will also appreciate eco-friendly details like the sustainably sourced wood, BPA-free plastic, and non-toxic dyes used in Hape's construction. Most importantly, these are toys that have stood the test of time that kids will love! Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl's top picks of new biographies about Mighty Women for adult readers.

Our community loves the children's and young adult books we share — but they also love when we share titles that are suitable for adult readers! In this new post, you can discover our favorite new releases for adults from fall 2017. From scientists to political leaders, athletes to activists, these mighty women lived fascinating lives and their stories deserve to be told. We hope that you'll enjoy these recommendations as much as the Mighty Girls in your lives enjoy our recommendations of biographies for them!

For more biographies and memoirs for adult readers, check out our blog post from earlier this year, Stories of Mighty Women: 55 New Biographies for Adult Readers. Continue reading → Continue reading

Our top picks of affordable gifts for the birthday Mighty Girls in your life!

If you're raising a Mighty Girl, you might want to share the fun by seeking out girl-empowering gifts for her friends' birthdays! The range of gifts marketed to girls is often extremely limited and highly gendered — so a little variety can encourage the birthday girl to explore new interests that she might not have considered before receiving the gift.

With that in mind, we've pulled together a selection of our favorite girl-empowering birthday gifts that are all under $25 so they fit within birthday-gift budgets. With a wide variety of toys, ranging from science to pretend play to games, there's something here to appeal to every child! And, if your Mighty Girl has a birthday coming up, you can also share this blog post or direct them to our extensive toy collection to encourage friends and family to think a little outside of the toys traditionally marketed to girls when gift shopping.

If you're looking for a fun Mighty Girl party favor idea, check out this Superhero Cape and Mask Set, which includes cape and mask sets featuring Spider-Girl, Batgirl, Wonder Woman, and Supergirl.

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A Mighty Girl's top picks of newly released books starring girls and women who love science, engineering, and math!

With the demand for stories about female scientists at an all-time high, there have been growing numbers of exceptional books published about girls and women who love science, engineering, and math! It can be challenging for parents and educators, however, to stay up on all of the new releases so, to help make it easier, we've featured 12 of these titles in a new blog post. From books about role models like scientist Temple Grandin, computer scientist Grace Hopper, doctor Patricia Bath, mathematician Katherine Johnson, and marine biologist Eugenie Clark to fictional stories about science-loving girls curious about the world around them, there's sure to be a new book to appeal to every budding young scientist!

For more books for all ages about girls and women who love science, check out our blog post 50 Books to Inspire Science-Loving Mighty Girls or browse our entire Science / Technology Collection. Continue reading → Continue reading

"We all have a responsibility to raise boys and girls who treat every person with equal respect and dignity.”

No matter how much we try to protect them, kids regularly encounter sexist and objectifying language and behavior at school, online, watching television, or even just walking down the street. Even kids who haven't encountered sexual harassment personally have likely heard about the widespread problem at school or in the media. While it’s important to talk to all children about this topic, the issue is particularly important for girls. “This kind of objectifying talk... raises girls to believe that their bodies are literally up for grabs — that their appearance is the most valuable asset they have,” says Girl Scouts’ Developmental Psychologist Andrea Bastiani Archibald. Fortunately, while this topic can be a challenging one, the Girl Scouts have offered four great tips to parents on how to talk to kids in an age appropriate way about sexual harassment: what it is, why it’s wrong, and what each of us can do to help put an end to it. Continue reading → Continue reading

Six of the ten national finalists in the premier science competition for middle schoolers are Mighty Girls! In this post, we introduce the girls and their incredible projects.

The Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge is the premier science competition in the U.S. for middle school kids and, like every year, the Mighty Girls in the competition continue to astound! The event challenges kids in 5th through 8th grades to use their scientific know-how to come up with an invention or solution that addresses an everyday problem. Whether it's an issue that affects themselves, their family, their community, or the whole world, they get to turn their ingenuity and drive towards making a difference — and every year, it's amazing what these young scientists think up!

This year, in a show of how girls and women are on the leading edge of science, six out of the ten national finalists are Mighty Girl scientists! These Young Scientist finalists will be spending their summers working with mentors to develop their visions into a more polished prototype, and we can't wait to see the results at the finals in October, where they'll be vying for a $25,000 prize and the title of "America's Top Young Scientist" for 2017.

In this blog post, we introduce you to these six clever and creative Mighty Girls and their incredible projects. From harnessing an unexpected source of clean energy to cleaning up oil spills with everyday materials to changing the way we design medical equipment for kids, these Mighty Girls' inventive solutions to everyday problems will inspire science lovers of every age! Continue reading → Continue reading

40 of our favorite Mighty Girl stories starring smart, confident, and courageous princesses!

A princess is always pretty, sweet, passive, and needs a prince to rescue her, right? Wrong!

At A Mighty Girl, we receive many questions from people searching for empowering depictions of princesses — books that prove that princesses can be much so more than the limited stereotype usually applied! Instead, princess characters can be smart, strong, courageous, daring, and kind; and most importantly, they can be individuals, just like the children who love hearing their stories.

In this blog post, we feature 40 of our favorite independent princess stories but this is just a small sample of the many great titles available. In our popular special feature The Ultimate Guide to the Independent Princess, you'll find more than 100 books starring smart, confident, and courageous princesses for all ages! Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl's top picks of books, toys, and gear to inspire young astronomers -- and introduce them to the women who helped us understand the stars.

On August 21, people across North America will get the chance to witness a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event: a solar eclipse! It's the first total eclipse in the continental US since 1979, and for central US states, the first total eclipse since 1918. Even for those not in the zone of totality, partial eclipses will be visible in many places. So it's no wonder that there is so much excitement brewing — and with it, a surge of interest in astronomy and all things space!

If the upcoming eclipse has your kids clamoring to learn more about astronomy, this is the perfect time to pursue their interest — and to share stories of the little-known women who have made enormous contributions to the field. In this blog post, we're providing a selection of books to talk about the eclipse itself and gear to view the eclipse safely,  as well as a variety of toys and science kits to support an interest in astronomy, and books about female astronomers throughout history. It's a great way to show kids of all ages that the sky doesn't have to be the limit! Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl's top picks of Amazon Prime Day Deals for Mighty Girls!

With Amazon offering over 100,000 deals for this year's Prime Day, it can be challenging to find the best deals for the Mighty Girls in your life. To help make it easier, we've sorted through all of the options to find fifty of the most empowering and high quality toys and gear for kids of all ages. From building sets to arts & crafts to pretend-play toys, there's something that every Mighty Girl will love!

As always, you'll need to be an Amazon Prime member to take advantage of the Prime Day deals. You can sign up for a 30-day free trial if you'd like to access the deals featured below. Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl's top picks of science kits for summer fun, learning, & discovery!

With summer here, there's no better time for kids to delve deeper into topics that interest them — including a love of science! An intriguing science kit is an excellent choice for a summer activity: kids will love being able to learn hands-on and at their own pace. To help you find one that's just right for a Mighty Girl in your life, we've featured two dozen of our favorites in this blog post, with options for preschoolers through middle schoolers. And, with science kits on everything from geology to forensics to chemistry, there's sure to be one to excite every budding young scientist! Continue reading → Continue reading