We're very excited to share news of a fantastic new feature on A Mighty Girl -- our Wishlist is now shareable! We’ve been receiving many requests for this capability and we hope this shareable wishlist will transform your holiday shopping by making it simple for you to share your Mighty... Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Research Intern

A Mighty Girl is proud to introduce our collection of books celebrating the winter holidays! We hope you enjoy our selection of high quality stories that emphasize values common to Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa such compassion, love, and generosity and, as always, feature a host of Mighty Girls and Women. These lovely books are as likely to become favorites of adults as they are to please the children reading them.

Some of these stories explore holidays traditions recounted in folktales from around the world. Books like Habari Gani? What’s the News and Babushka teach children more about the origins of the holidays they celebrate. The Miracle of the First Poinsettia: A Mexican Christmas Story and Cobweb Christmas: The Tradition of Tinsel show how varied the origins of common traditions can be, while Latkes, Latkes, Good to Eat and Marta and the Manger Straw show how the values of generosity, kindness, and compassion are universal. Continue reading → Continue reading

Today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and it's an excellent time to discuss healthy relationships with the Mighty Girls in your life. Abuse occurs in 1 in 10 adolescent relationships and appears to be on the rise as cell phones and social media are increasingly used for harassment.

The National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline reports that the majority of their calls come from girls seeking help in responding to relentless texting or efforts by boys to control their behavior. As Dr. Elizabeth Miller, an expert on teen relationship abuse, explains, the situation among teens is complicated by the fact that “few adolescents understand what a healthy relationship looks like.” Teens often interpret warning signs of unhealthy relationships such as excessive attention as expressions of love.

In this post, we've provided a series of resources and recommended reading where you can learn more about the issue of teen relationship abuse as well as information on where teens can turn to find help for themselves or their friends. Continue reading → Continue reading

Today we're excited to present one of our favorite new site additions ever -- A Mighty Girl's Character Collection! Whether your favorite Mighty Girl character is Madeline, Merida, or a historical figure like Marie Curie, you can now easily find everything on A Mighty Girl about your favorite character all in one place!

As we've expanded A Mighty Girl over the past few months from our initial collection of girl-empowering books and movies to include music, TV shows, and, just this past week, toys, we’ve realized that the site content related to your favorite characters is now found in multiple sections across the site. With our new Character Collection, you can find everything related to your favorite character with just one click.

If you mouse over the new "Character Collection" link on the top menu bar, it will open a directory featuring our four types of characters: fictional ones from books and TV shows/movies; historical girls and women; and a special collection dedicated just to superheroes. Continue reading → Continue reading

Today in Mighty Girl history, six-year-old Ruby Bridges walked into William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans surrounded by a team of U.S. Marshals; thus, becoming the first African-American child to desegregate an all-white elementary school in the South. When Ruby arrived at school that first day in 1960, an event commemorated by Norman Rockwell in his famous painting "The Problem We All Live With," she was met by a vicious mob shouting and throwing objects at her.

One of the federal marshals, Charles Burks, who served on her escort team, recalls Ruby's courage in the face of such hatred: "For a little girl six years old going into a strange school with four strange deputy marshals, a place she had never been before, she showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn't whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier. We were all very proud of her." Continue reading → Continue reading

After months of hard work, we are thrilled to present our newest site addition -- A Mighty Girl Toys! With the world's largest collection of girl empowering books, movies, and music, adding toys was a natural extension of our mission of showcasing diverse and high-quality girl empowering products.

From science and building toys to dolls and action figures to video games and crafts, the new toy section features nearly 2,000 carefully selected toys that honor the entire breadth of girls' interests – not just those represented in the ‘girls’ aisle of your average toy store.

In this post, we hope to provide answers to a few common questions about the toy section and, hopefully, make it easy for you to find exactly what you're looking for during your visit. Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl recently launched its new toy section with nearly 2,000 high-quality, girl empowering toys. Liz Alarid, A Mighty Girl Research Intern and mother of a young Mighty Girl, was one of the interns instrumental in building this wonderful resource. In this essay, she shares her thoughts on genderization of toys and its repercussions on children's development.

To learn more about the new toy section, including a few tips on how to get the most out of your visit, visit our Toy FAQ. Continue reading → Continue reading

Many thanks to everyone who sent in photos of their Mighty Girls in costume for our A Mighty Girl Halloween photo album! We were extremely impressed by the creativity and diversity of the costumes, many of which were made by the girls themselves. To browse the amazing array of incredible Mighty... Continue reading

Today in Mighty Girl history, Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of Girl Scouts in the United States, was born in 1860. Born in Savannah, Georgia, Low, known as "Daisy" to friends and family, spent much of her early adulthood traveling extensively and exploring the world. In 1911, she discovered a new passion when she met former English General Robert Baden-Powell who had recently founded the Scouting movement in the UK. Baden-Powell has also recruited his sister Agnes to organize the Girl Guides and new scout troops were springing up across England.

Inspired to bring the new movement to America, Low returned to the US in 1912 and made a historic call to her cousin, Nina Anderson Pape where she stated: "Come right over! I've got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we're going to start it tonight!" The two women recruited girls from throughout Savannah and, on March 12, 1912, held the first meeting of the American Girl Guides. By 1913, the group was thriving with Low as president, and the organization's name was changed to "Girl Scouts." Continue reading → Continue reading

By Lili Sandler, A Mighty Girl Research Intern

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our newest section, Costumes for Mighty Girls! A dress-up bin is a fabulous addition to any Mighty Girl’s toy collection, and we’re excited to provide resources for making Halloween or any dress-up occasion one that promotes girl empowerment.

Over the last few decades, commercially-made Halloween costumes have been altered in many ways, but the majority of those alterations have resulted in one-dimensional and even harmful depictions of girls and women. Whether it’s changing an otherwise genderless costume, such as an animal, into an unnecessarily gendered one by adding bows and tutus, or taking a traditional -- and arguably feminist -- costume such as a witch or superhero and sexualizing it, society has further marginalized girls and women by limiting their dress-up options to those that are either “feminine” or “sexy”.

Girls deserve more choice in their dress-up selections beyond this ever-narrowing interpretation of what constitutes a “girl’s costume”. At A Mighty Girl, we know that there are so many more interesting ways girls want to express themselves, and we’re here to help! Continue reading → Continue reading