A Mighty Girl's top picks of the best new books for children and teens about incredible women from around the world.

Every year, more and more books are published recognizing the incredible contributions that girls and women have made throughout history! These inspiring stories give kids — girls and boys alike — a more nuanced and complete understanding of history, while also providing role models for the next generation of groundbreaking women to come. Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl's top picks of the best new books for children and teens about incredible women from around the world.

Gerda Lerner, the historian and scholar who pioneered the field of women's history, once said, "In my courses, the teachers told me about a world in which ostensibly one-half the human race is doing everything significant and the other half doesn’t exist." But increasingly, we are reclaiming history, telling the stories of the girls and women whose contributions to our shared story deserve to be celebrated! As parents and educators, it's also important that we tell these stories to all of our children, boys and girls alike, so that they live in a world where history has always been about the contributions of all of humanity. Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl's top picks of books about healthy relationships for tweens and teens in recognition of Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month.

Tweens and teens are entering a new world of love and romantic relationships. But when you combine the overwhelming emotions of first crushes and partners with the emotional complexity of tween and teen minds, it can be hard to figure out whether a relationship is real — and whether it's healthy. Add in media messages that glorify unhealthy behavior — how many romantic comedies involve the boy who just won't give up on the girl who said no? — and kids can find it extremely difficult to figure out what healthy romantic love really looks like.

February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month, which makes it the perfect time to start conversations about healthy relationships with the Mighty Girls in your life. Dating violence among teens is a big issue: according to Loveisrespect, an organization dedicated to helping teens in unhealthy and abusive relationships, one in three US teens will experience physical, sexual, or emotional abuse from a partner before they reach adulthood. But parents and educators who teach kids about what a positive, respectful relationship looks like — and how to identify an unhealthy one — can make a huge difference.

So this February, start talking to your kids about what healthy relationships look like! By sharing these stories, and talking about what makes real love so empowering and special, we can help the next generation find the loving, respectful partners they deserve. Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Communications Specialist

Moms can be an incredible source of inspiration, but that doesn’t mean they can’t use a little inspiration themselves! Stories of the incredible women of past and present aren’t just great to share with Mighty Girls: they’re also a great gift when you want to honor the place a woman has filled in your life.

If you’re looking for a good book as a gift for Mother’s Day, we feature a variety of intriguing biographies in our new blog post, including many new releases. These bios tell the stories of a a diverse range of women, from King Peggy, an American secretary who changed the future of an African village, to Nancy Wake, the SOE operative who was the Gestapo’s most wanted person in World War II, to 80-year-old world champion triathlete Sister Madonna Bruder, also known as the Iron Nun. The common thread that connects them all, though, is daring and determination. These are definitely Mighty women!

For even more adult biographies which would make excellent gift options, check out the recommendations in our previous blog post Stories of Mighty Women: New Biographies for Adult Readers.
Continue reading → Continue reading

How parents can encourage mixed-gender friendships and help kids question gender stereotypes.

"Girl-boy friendships matter. They give kids a chance to explore themselves outside of constrictive gender scripts, and, ideally, question stereotypes," observes writer Elisa Strauss on CNN. "Girl-boy friendships can help undo some of these socialized gender constraints. When parents and teachers approve of these relationships, they are sending their children the message that it's not only okay to play with the another gender, but it is also okay to play like them."  Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl's favorite new releases and old time favorites to keep her reading all summer long!

For teens, whose reading skills are solidly established, summer reading isn't about practice; it's about getting to read whatever you want! Teen readers have reached a level of maturity where few topics are off limits, and storylines and characters can be extremely deep and complex. Just like in the real world, heroes have flaws and sometimes there isn't even a resolution — but that just makes the books teens are reading more absorbing and more real.

To keep your teen reading this summer, we've put together a list of forty engrossing young adult novels starring girls and women. From fascinating fiction to intriguing biographies and memoirs, these books will grab your teen's interest until the final word. Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Senior Research Intern

Since A Mighty Girl launched in April 2012, one question we’ve received from many parents is what parenting books we recommend to help them raise strong, confident, independent, and courageous girls. With that in mind, A Mighty Girl is proud to launch our new parenting section, featuring over 150 carefully-selected books about a wide variety of parenting issues.

A Mighty Girl’s parenting philosophy is that kids should be encouraged to explore their own interests and strengths, rather than following society’s narrow idea of what is gender appropriate. We believe in encouraging girls and supporting the development of their healthy self-image while fostering their compassion and respect for others.

We also believe that kids need to learn basic life skills like financial management, responsible technology use, and stress management so that they can be happy and safe, even as their world expands from childhood life with Mom and Dad to teenage freedom and eventually adult independence. Most importantly, we believe that parents can make all of those things happen. Continue reading → Continue reading

By Carolyn Danckaert and Aaron Smith, A Mighty Girl Co-Founders

Campaign Update: (5/19/13) The Target Disney Princess Collection page featuring the madeover Merida has been removed.

Campaign Update: (5/17/13) A Mighty Girl has launched a special Keep Merida Brave campaign page!

Statement Update: Appended on 5/17/2013 addressing redesign being a part of limited line of products.

Since launching our petition on May 4, A Mighty Girl -- along with more than 200,000 petition signers -- has been calling on Disney to "Say No to the Merida Makeover and Keep Our Hero Brave!" Despite the overwhelming response from both parents and children -- and contrary to reports in various news outlets that Disney has pulled the madeover design -- Disney continues to promote the redesigned, sexier Merida and this version is emblazoned across Target’s Disney Princess Collection website.

In one of their first public statements on the Merida makeover to the Disney industry blog, Inside the Magic, Disney claimed that the madeover Merida is a "one-time stylized version" for the Target Disney Princess line but, as Ricky Brigante writes, "they could not say exactly how she would be depicted alongside the other Disney Princesses." They further asserted, Brigante notes, that Disney "had no intention of changing who Merida is." However, the madeover version of Merida, as seen on the Target website, shows that Disney has already radically changed the beloved character into a pale reflection of her former self. Continue reading → Continue reading

Our top picks of books about trailblazing African-American girls and women!

Too often the stories of African-American women, who historically faced both gender and racial discrimination, have been hidden from many mainstream histories. Fortunately, in recent years, many have had their stories told in children's books and, in our blog post, we've featured 99 books for all ages, from tots to teens, about trailblazing African-American women and their diverse contributions to history. Their stories are heroic, heartbreaking, and hopeful, and are perfect for reading with your kids during Black History Month and all year round! Continue reading → Continue reading

"We are so busy teaching girls to be likable that we forget to teach them that they have the right to be respected."

Most parents talk to their children about their emotions, but there's one emotion that people often leave out when talking to girls: anger. "I don’t remember my parents or other adults ever talking to me about anger directly," observes Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger, "Sadness, yes. Envy, anxiety, guilt, check, check, check. But not anger.... While parents talk to girls about emotions more than they do to boys, anger is excluded." In fact, from an early age, parents, caregivers, and teachers expect girls to regulate their emotions more effectively than boys, teaching them that expressing "negative" emotions like anger is socially unacceptable. In this blog post, we'll explore why it's important to let girls be angry – and how to teach girls to channel their anger productively. Continue reading → Continue reading