Our top picks of books for children and teens about the fight for girls' right to attend school.

When you’re a child in a developed nation today, you don’t really think much about going to school — it’s just what everyone does. And yet, according to A World At School, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing educational access, there are an estimated 57 million children around the world who do not go to school, and another 250 million who attend school but never learn to read and write.

This is a problem that particularly affects girls: according to A World At School, “Girls represent 32 million of the out-of school children. They face discrimination, and are forced into marriage and even subjected to violence for wanting to learn. Every day, 25,000 girls are forced into marriage and out of school – the end of their only opportunity to learn.” Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Communications Specialist

2015 has been a fantastic year for new Mighty Girl books! We're thrilled to see so many authors, illustrators, and publishers producing books that celebrating brave, intelligent, creative, and confident girls! In fact, our 2015 Year In Review collection features nearly 200 titles!

In this blog post, we're showcasing many of our favorite 2015 girl-empowering releases for toddlers, preschoolers, and early elementary-aged children, including board books, picture books, and early chapter books. With a wide assortment of books featuring diverse characters, engaging stories, and creative artwork, there's sure to be a title to delight every child!

And if you're looking for a tween or teen, stay tuned, check out our blog post,
Top 2015 Mighty Girl Books for Tweens and Teens, for our favorite new releases for older readers. You can also browse our entire 2015 Year In Review collection for options for all ages. Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Communications Specialist

When you’re looking for a gift for a book lover, the natural choice is a good book! There’s nothing more exciting for an avid reader than unwrapping a title they have been dying to read — or discovering an exciting new book they haven't heard of yet.

2015 has been a great year for Mighty Girl book releases so to help you find just the right book to wrap up this holiday, we're sharing fifty of our favorite girl-empowering titles that were released this year. From gorgeously-illustrated picture books to thought-provoking teen fiction, these titles will delight, intrigue, educate, and inspire girls and boys alike!

This post also provides a sneak peek at our upcoming 2015 Mighty Girl Year in Review series, which we’ll be releasing at the end of the year. Of course, you can also find many more reading recommendations in our entire collection of nearly 2,500 Mighty Girl books for all ages. Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Communications Specialist

In our blog Beloved Books: Twenty Mighty Girl Classics, we shared twenty Mighty Girl books from 1950 and earlier that have become favorites of multiple generations. Naturally, though, there are many equally wonderful stories that were written more recently! These are the books from the 1950s to the 1980s that many members of our community grew up reading — and are now beginning to pass on to their own Mighty Girls.

Although all classics remain popular because they break new ground, these modern classics show the changes to the way Western culture viewed girls and women. The Mighty Girls in these pages tackle difficult social issues, go on hitherto unimagined adventures, and dare to define themselves in daring ways. More diverse characters begin to fill their pages, as well, with more girls of color finally filling the roles of heroes instead of bystanders or companions. Most of all, the girls in these books are no longer portrayed as eccentrics for being daring, courageous, and smart: in fact, for these Mighty Girl authors, that’s just as expected!

So take a look at our list and see if your favorite Mighty Girl book from your own childhood is on here! One way or another, it’s sure to spur you to share your own list of modern classics with the Mighty Girls in your life.

Of course, the books featured in this post are only a handful of the wonderful Mighty Girl books available. To browse our collection of over 2,000 girl-empowering books for children and teens, visit our Books section.
Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Communications Specialist

While there are dozens of great new Mighty Girl books getting published every year, there are also many girl-empowering stories that have been passed down for generations! Times may have changed, but these classic characters still speak to the girls of today just as they did to their grandmothers.

With that in mind, we're showcasing our favorite classic Mighty Girl stories. These are books that you’re likely to remember from your own childhood — in fact, you may have even been first introduced to them because an adult you know loved them as as child!

Of course, there are so many of these classic stories that it was hard to narrow down our list, so with that in mind, we’ve split our list of favorites into two parts. In this post, we’re highlighting our twenty favorite stories from 1950 and earlier and we follow-up with a selection of our favorite modern classics in our post Beloved Books, Part 2: Twenty Mighty Girl Modern Classics.

The classic stories featured below have already been passed down through multiple generations — now is a great time to introduce them to a new generation of Mighty Girls! Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Communications Specialist

Do you remember having your period for the first time? Were you relieved, scared, confused? Did you know what was happening, or were you told after the fact? Did you think you could bleed to death or make people sick, or believe that you couldn’t swim or go to gym class? Did you hear someone make joking references to women being “on the rag” and think, “I’ll die of embarrassment if anyone knows?” Did you feel like you were prepared?

In a world that is increasingly public about all sorts of previously private topics, menstruation is still a taboo subject. What information girls do hear around them is often negative or incorrect, and even school health classes that discuss the subject often focus on the “nuts and bolts” without ever touching on the real, practical experience of a monthly cycle. As a result menarche — a girl’s first period — is still likely to be disconcerting for her.

But parents, mentors, and friends of Mighty Girls can turn this milestone of womanhood into a much more positive experience. By providing lots of accurate information, real-life experience, and practical advice, girls can learn to view their menstrual cycle in a totally different way: as an important element of their female nature and as a key sign of coming adulthood. In this blog, we’ll help you turn a girl’s first period into an empowering experience. Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Communications Specialist

It’s played by 250 million people in over 200 countries, and in many nations, it’s the most prominent women’s team sport. Women’s soccer games have been recorded since the late 19th century, and today, 177 nations have national women’s soccer teams. Best of all, the future looks bright for women’s soccer: girls’ soccer leagues continue to thrive, with gender representation among youth soccer players almost exactly 50-50. With such an incredible love of the Beautiful Game out there, it’s no wonder that many Mighty Girls have been eagerly awaiting the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup!

To celebrate this event — and the love of girls and women everywhere for the sport — we’ve collected some of our favorite books, toys, posters, and clothes celebrating the great game of soccer. We hope that these resources will have your Mighty Girl dreaming of her favorite game long after the World Cup is won.

In addition to our recommendations below, there's also a guidebook to everything going on during the 2015 Women's World Cup, FIFA Women's World Cup Canada 2015: The Official Book. Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Communications Specialist

“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.” — Anne Frank

Stories about the Holocaust can seem very distant to a child today: decades of time and, more importantly, vast differences in life experiences separate them from the life of a persecuted girl suffering from the Nazi regime. And then, at some point, she will read Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl (which we recommend for ages 11 and up) and, suddenly, there is a face to this painful history: the face of a girl her age, whose dreams, thoughts, and emotions are like her own.

When the facts and figures of Holocaust history — the vast numbers of displaced or dead — are inconceivable, the life of this one girl, hiding with her family in a desperate effort to save themselves, is strikingly real.

And yet the inspiring thing about Anne Frank’s life and writing is that she was never beaten down by the hatred directed at her. Instead, she continued to see the best of humanity. As she wrote, “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Her astounding optimism and resiliency have inspired girls — and the world — for generations, ever since the loose pages of her diary left Otto Frank’s hands to be published in 1947.

To honor this amazing spirit, A Mighty Girl has put together this collection of our favorite resources for young people about Anne Frank. This selection features books, movies, and even a poster that make tribute to the girl whose optimism and hope lasted through it all.

Of course, in addition to reading about Anne Frank, it is important that your child has an understanding of the Holocaust as a whole. You can find reading recommendations for children and teens about other aspects of Holocaust history in our first Holocaust Remembrance Week blog post, Yom HaShoah: A Mighty Girl Recognizes Holocaust Remembrance Week, and in our World War II / Holocaust section.

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By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Communications Specialist, and Carolyn Danckaert, A Mighty Girl Co-Founder

Earlier this month, we shared our top picks of 2014 Mighty Girl stories for toddlers and young children in our post, 2014 Mighty Girl Books for Younger Readers. Now, it’s time for the tweens and teens! This year’s releases range from fascinating stories of real-life women from history to thought-provoking realistic fiction to imaginative, daring fantasy and science fiction. No matter what your Mighty Girl enjoys reading, there’s a title here that will grab her attention!

For our favorite picture books and early chapter books from 2014, visit our post on the Top 2014 Mighty Girl Books for Younger Readers. You can view our entire collection of recent Mighty Girl releases in our special feature 2014 Mighty Girl Books: A Year in Review.

As with all of the books and other resources featured in our blog posts, you can click on any book link below to learn more about an individual title, read reviews, order a copy, or save a book to your wishlist to refer back to later.

2014 Mighty Girl Fiction for Tweens and Teens

The Return of Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke (age 7 - 12): Zita the Spacegirl is back in the exciting conclusion to this graphic novel trilogy. Wrongfully jailed on a prison planet, Zita discovers that the evil prison warden has a villainous plan! If she’s going to rescue the galaxy, though, she’ll have to plan a daring jailbreak — with friends old and new — first.

The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer Holm (age 8 - 12): Ellie is shocked when she learns that her immortality-obsessed grandpa Melvin has reverse-aged himself to 13 and will be joining her at middle school! Ellie rather enjoys connecting with her grandfather about science and discovery, until she realizes that many of the greatest scientific advances had unforeseen negative consequences.

A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd (age 8 - 12): 12-year-old Felicity sees words everywhere, but Midnight Gulch is the only place she’s ever seen words like “friend” and “home”. But if she wants to convince her wandering mother to stay there, she’ll have to bring the magic back to Midnight Gulch and figure out how to help heal her mother’s broken heart. Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Communications Specialist, and Carolyn Danckaert, A Mighty Girl Co-Founder

Every year brings great new children’s and young adult book releases, and 2014 was no exception — especially when it comes to books starring Mighty Girls! From fun fantasty to fascinating biographies, from thought-provoking realistic fiction to beautiful works of poetry, there have been dozens of wonderful releases in the past year. In fact, our 2014 Year in Review collection has topped 150 titles!

In this post, we showcase 35 of our favorite 2014 books for younger readers, including board books, picture books, and early chapter books. This wide assortment of titles feature diverse characters, engaging stories, and creative artwork that are sure to delight your Mighty Girl!

To learn about our favorite 2014 releases for tweens and teens, check out our post, Top 2014 Mighty Girl Books for Tweens and Teens. You can view our entire collection of recent Mighty Girl releases in our special feature 2014 Mighty Girl Books: A Year in Review.

Continue reading → Continue reading