Our top picks of Mighty Girl role model dolls from Frida Kahlo to Rosie Revere, Engineer!

For many Mighty Girls, a beloved doll or action figure becomes a constant companion. With so many new dolls based on both real-life and fictional female role models, now is the perfect time to give her one to look up to! From scientists to artists to superheroes, these dolls represent many positive values including intelligence, courage, compassion, perseverance, curiosity, and more. Whether you're picking a person that your Mighty Girl already admires, or introducing her to a role model that you think she'll love, our blog post will help you find the perfect doll for encouraging her to dream big! Continue reading → Continue reading

The new Sesame Street programming aims to resources "deliver the words children need to hear most: You are not alone. You will be taken care of. Addiction is a sickness and, as with any sickness, people need help to get better. And most importantly: It’s not your fault."

The beloved children's TV show Sesame Street is helping children understand the difficult topic of addiction with its new Muppet character, Karli! The 6-and-a-half-year-old Muppet appears in several new online videos which explore how her mom has struggled with addiction and is now in recovery in child-friendly ways. According to Sesame Workshop, the free resources "deliver the words children need to hear most: You are not alone. You will be taken care of. Addiction is a sickness and, as with any sickness, people need help to get better. And most importantly: It’s not your fault." Continue reading → Continue reading

MIT professor Esther Duflo has helped transform the field of developmental economics by applying a scientific approach to policy interventions focused on alleviating global poverty.

Dr. Esther Duflo has just become the second woman in history and the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Prize in Economics! The 46-year-old MIT professor shares the prize with her husband, Dr. Abhijit Banerjee, and colleague Dr. Michael Kremer; together they have helped millions of people around the world with their research to develop practical interventions to alleviating global poverty. “In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in today's prize announcement. After learning of her Nobel win, Duflo said she was "humbled" and, in light of how underrepresented women are in the field of economics, she hopes that it will "inspire many, many other women to continue working and many other men to give them the respect that they deserve like every single human being." Continue reading → Continue reading

Girls' confidence drops by 30% between the ages 8 and 14.

"Now, more than ever, girls should be armed with confidence. They need to have faith in their phenomenal abilities, resist the need to please, fight back against intimidation from peers or adults, and stand up for others, and most importantly, themselves. Confident girls become confident women, and we want that status for our girls, who seem fearless and exuberant through most of elementary school, only to lose confidence at puberty. Boys and girls run neck and neck, confidence-wise, up to then, but when the estrogen-testosterone waves start flooding kids’ brains, all that changes. For girls, confidence takes a huge hit," observe Katty Kay, Claire Shipman and JillEllyn Riley.  Continue reading → Continue reading

Our favorite Mighty Girl school supplies to provide inspiration and encouragement all year long!

Who says school supplies have to be boring? When you pick up a few unique and empowering school supplies for your Mighty Girl (or yourself!), you're setting her up for an awesome year — one where she'll feel ready to take on any challenge in front of her!

To help find the perfect thing to give her a boost this year — whether she's starting kindergarten or college — we've put together a selection of our favorite school supplies, perfect for providing encouragement and inspiration all year long. From pencil cases to lunch wraps, there's something here for everyone. So take your pick and make this another Mighty year! Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl's 2018 Halloween Gallery is now live! A small sample of the many hundreds of photos submitted can be viewed in our Halloween Highlights blog post.

Thank you to everyone who submitted photos of their Mighty Girls in costume to our 2018 Halloween Gallery! We were awed by the creativity and variety of the Mighty Girl costumes submitted to the gallery. As we've always said, Mighty Girls know that their costume possibilities are limited only by their imaginations and with costumes ranging from ones based on favorite superheroes to ones inspired by historic role models, these Mighty Girls clearly know no bounds! Continue reading → Continue reading

Our top 60 picks of backpacks for children and teens that reflect Mighty Girls' diverse interests in a wide range of colors and designs.

Whether you're looking for a new backpack for school, need something to tote stuff for sleepovers, or want a heavy-duty, high-capacity daypack for hikes and traveling, it's important that the bag you pick can take everything your Mighty Girl has to throw at it! At the same time, backpacks are a fun way to reflect a child's interests and a tween's or teen's personality. The best backpacks are the ones that both go the distance and capture the wide array of interests of the Mighty Girls in our lives!

With that in mind, we've put together a selection of our favorite backpacks for kids, from toddlers to teens. In the first half of this blog post, we've showcased a variety of backpacks in fun, colorful patterns that cover a wide variety of themes ranging from animals to science, and then in the second half, we've shared some of our favorite backpacks featuring Mighty Girl characters, including site favorites such as Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, Moana, Star Wars, The Incredibles, Inside Out, and Doc McStuffins. We're confident there's one every Mighty Girl will love! Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl's top picks of Mighty Girl superhero books for National Superhero Day!

When danger threatens, Mighty Girl superheroes get ready to don their capes and masks and set out to save the day! While superheroes like Wonder Woman have been around for decades, in recent years writers, illustrators, and publishers have realized how many girls around the world have been waiting to see superheroes who look like them. And between long-time favorite superhero characters, new reimaginings of existing stories, and original characters whose stories are all their own, there have never been more choices for girls of all ages!

In this blog post, we're sharing our favorite superhero stories starring girls and women, from early chapter books to trade paperbacks collections of comic series to prequel novels telling untold parts of a character's story. These stories are full of action and adventures, with Mighty Girl superheroes who rely on brains as well as brawn when it's time to fight for justice! Continue reading → Continue reading

"These aren't just the stories of famous people. This is what we're all capable of on our very best days."

For the past four years, Brad Meltzer's best-selling series Ordinary People Change the World has been teaching kids that 'everyone can be a hero' while introducing them to a variety of amazing people throughout history. This week, A Mighty Girl spoke with Brad about the release of his 15th book in the series, I Am Harriet Tubman, what he hopes kids take away from his books, and his plans for the future of the popular series.

To celebrate the new book's release, A Mighty Girl supporters can sign up to win an autographed set of all seven books from the series focused on the stories of Mighty Women. To enter, visit our I Am Harriet Tubman & Ordinary People Change the World Giveaway page. Continue reading → Continue reading

35 Posters for Children With Uplifting Messages of Support & Solidarity.

Over the past few days, children's book illustrators have been creating images featuring their beloved characters coupled with messages of love and support. Many of these images show their characters with a safety pin (#KidLitSafetyPin), others show the characters hugging (#HugsfromKidLit), but all are symbols to kids feeling vulnerable or being targeted with harassment that they are not alone -- that they are loved and valued. Moreover, these drawings, which the artists hope teachers and librarians will post in schools (you can click on any image below to open a printable version), send an important message to all students that now is the time to come together with friends and classmates to stand against any hateful speech or actions motivated by differences in gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, country of origin, or ability.

Along with sharing these messages of love, hope, and solidarity with children, author Kate Messner also expressed the importance of taking the next step: "If this is something you plan to share with students, please also take time to talk about what it means to have someone's back when it comes to fighting bullying and bigotry. Wearing a safety pin (or putting up a poster) doesn't really help unless it's accompanied by a promise of action. Speaking up and standing beside people who are being targeted requires courage, commitment, and planning. Here's a resource [from the Southern Poverty Law Center] that I think is great for talking with middle grade kids and older."

With young children, picture books offer an excellent way to emphasize the importance of kindness and acceptance of others. And, of course, literature is also a powerful way to explore topics ranging from misogyny to bigotry to xenophobia with older children and teens, as well as a vehicle for encouraging discussion on how we can build a more just and inclusive society now and in the future. In the resource section below, you can find a variety of such reading recommendations for all ages.

We hope you will print the images below, share them, and let all of the kids in your community know: they can find safety, hope, and love in books and with you. Continue reading → Continue reading